Fifty Years Ago A Memoir

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FIFTY YEARS AGO

A MEMOIR.

RIGHT REVEREND JOHN j. HOOAN, D.D.,

Bishop of Kansas City.

Written in 1898.

1907.

TRANKJLIN HUDSON PUBLISHING CO.,
KANSAS CITY, MO.

Copyright 1907.

JOHN J. HOGAN,

Kansas City, Mo.

DEDICATION.

To the memory of the dear friends and compan-
ions of my school-boy days this little book is lovingly
inscribed.

PREFACE.

In the evening of life, relieved from burthensome duties
and cares of office now happily devolving on my Right JRe-v.
Coadjutor, I find my thoughts constantly recurring to the
friends and events of my early life. It is for the compan-
ionship of these persons, and events now belonging to the re-
mote past, which I fondly call the rosy morning of life, that
I recall them and bid them live ivilh me again in the fascina-
tions of memory. The solitariness of old age is a garden
a -bloom 'with fairest flowers , -when life's career, viewed back-
watds at its close, is contemplated as appointed by the in-
finite love, wisdom, and goodness of God, Who disposeth all
things sweetly, ordaining all things in mercy, and in meas-
ure and mimber, for our greater happiness and Mis greater
h on or and glory.

INDEX.

Page.

INTRODUCTION, 5

CAHIRGUILLAMORE, 9

RAHEN, . 12

HOL,Y CROSvS, . ... 2O

PROFESSOR MULCAIRE, 34

MEANUS, .... . 37

CROOM, .... 40

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT, . .... 41

AGITATION FOR REPEAL, . . .... 42

POYNING'S LAW, . 42

IRISH VOLUNTEERS, . 43

O'CoNNELL, ... . . 42, 44, 48, 50

O'GRADYS, . . 24, 27, 28, 47

HERBERTSTOWN, . 54

CHARLEVILLE, . . . .56

MATHEMATICS, . , . 58

THE FAMINE YEARS, ... . . 59

THE MOST SERIOUS YET, . 63

MY MIND MADE UP, ... ... 67

OPENING THE WAY, 68

ADIEUS AND DEPARTURE, 69

LIMERICK, ... ... 70

DUBININ, .... .... 71

LIVERPOOL, 71

OFF FOR THE AZORES, 73

THE DOLDRUMS, . . . . . 74

SARGASSO SEA, . 75

THE BAHAMAS, 76

KEY WEST, . - . 77

THE FLORIDAS, .... ...'... 78

8 INDEX

Page.

THE TORTUGAS, } ! 79

" SWEET SILVER LIGHT OF THE MOON," 80

TORNADO, ->v< 81

MOUTHS OF THE MISSISSIPPI, 82

RICH AND PICTURESQUE, . 84

NEW ORLEANS, .... . .86

THE Big Missouri, .... 87

BATON ROUGE, .... 89

NATCHEZ, . . . .90

VICKSBURG, . 91

FIRST CHOLERA CASE, . 92

MEMPHIS, ... 93

CAIRO, . . 93

CAPE GIRARDEAU, .... 93

ST. GENEVIEVE, 94

ST. Louis, 94

RESIDENCE OF ARCHIUSIIOP OF ST. LOUIS, . 95

VERY REV. SIMON A. PARIS, ... .96

ST. PATRICK'S CHURCH, ST. LOUIS, . . . 96

ARCHBISHOP OF ST. Louis 97-98

ALTON, 99

REV. FATHER CARROLL, .... .99

TRENCHERY, ORGANIST, .... 100-101

MR. MICHAEL CARROLL, 102

DR. T. M. HOPE, . . 104

THE FAMOUS DUELLO, . . 104

RT. REV. JAMES O. VANDEVELDE, D.D., .105

VERY REV. WILLIAM QUARTER, V.(r., 106

CARONDELET SEMINARY 107

DIVINE PRAISES 108

FIFTY YEARS AGO

CAHIRGUILLAMORE.

I was born May 10, 1829. The place of my birth is
known as Cahirguillamore. Cahirguillarnore is in the
parish of Grange, County Limerick, Ireland. The parish
of Grange is succursal to the parish of Bruff. The village
of Grange is three miles north of the town of Bruff. Ca-
hirguillamore is one mile west of the village of Grange.
Cahir in the Irish language signifies city, or, more prop-
erly, a city having jurisdiction, as a bishop's see, or the
seat of a judge. Cahir pronounced in the Irish language
Kauheer means chair or bench, and is analogous in
meaning to cathedra. The suffix Guillamore (in Irish,
Giolla Mor) signifies big knight; but who the big knight
was is uncertain, though a vague tradition points to him
as the famous White Knight of the sixteenth century.
At present Cahirguillamore (the City of the Big Knight)
is the home of the descendants of Chief Baron Standish
O'Grady, who was raised to the peerage of Ireland, as
Lord Guillamore, in 1831.

9

10 FIFTY YEARS AGO

There are many Cahirs in Ireland, distinguished by
their suffixes, such as Cahir-civeen, Cahir-daniel, Cahir-
emee, Cahir-norry, Cahir-korna. The ruins of Cahir_
guillamore, which are extensive, show that it was once an
important city ; but the age to which it belonged is in the
same obscurity as Ireland's round towers or the pyra-
mids of Egypt.

The year 1829, in which I was born, marks the be-
ginning of the epoch of religious toleration of Catholics in
Ireland, at the close of a period of persecution of three
hundred years, which equalled in cruelty and duration
the persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire from
Nero to Constantine. Catholic Emancipation in the
British Empire was read a third time and passed in the
British Parliament on the loth of April, 1829, which was
one month before I was born.

My parents were James Hogan and Ellen Connor.
James Hogan was born in Cahir, County Limerick, Ire-
land, in 1785. Ellen Connor, my mother, was born at
Uregar, Drommin, County Limerick, Ireland, in 1792.
My father was well educated in the Irish and English
languages, in mathematics, and in Latin and Greek clas-
sics. My mother knew Irish and English well, and was up
to the advanced common-school grade of her time. My

FIFTY "YEARS A QO H

father, though educated for a profession, had the good
sense to confine his ambition to the safer and less conten-
tious way of living as a farmer of land and a dealer in
cattle and crops; and besides, the penal laws, then in
force in Ireland, debarred Catholics from the learned pro-
fessions and from Government office, unless upon re-
cusancy of their faith, which, in my father's case, was an
insuperable objection.

My parents married in 1812. My father died at Ca-
hirguillamore in 1856, the seventy-first year of his age;
my mother died, likewise at Cahirguillamore, in 1832, in
the fortieth year of her age. My father did not make a
second marriage. They were exemplary parents, and
governed their children and household strictly, in ac-
cordance with teachings of Christian faith and morals.
God grant them eternal rest in peace. Amen.

The homestead where I was born has been greatly
altered by the vicissitudes of times and masters for sixty
years. The evergreen hedges, venerable shade trees,
kitchen garden, orchard, farm yard, and out offices have
suffered the fate of Goldsmith's Deserted Village. In a
corner of a cattle range a solitary stone house remains.

I2 FIFTY YEARS AGO

RAHEN.

I was the youngest but one of nine children, seven
sons and two daughters. At the age of five I went with
my brothers and sisters and several neighboring children
to school to Andrew Slattery, who taught in the village of
Rahen, half a mile distant from the family residence. I
had for intimate schoolmate a little boy of my own age
and size, named Patsy Scott. Patsy and Johnny sat side
by side in school, and were very much attached. Patsy
was fond of me and I was fond of Patsy. We had our
battles, however ; once we had a very hot battle. Patsy
drew a pin from his plaid dress and stuck it at me, and I
drew a pin from my plaid dress and stuck it at Patsy.
He cried and bawled and I cried and bawled. Then the
master jumped up from his chair and made straightway
for us, rod in hand. We thought we were to be killed on
the spot, and we roared and bawled seven times louder
than before. All the boys and girls in school got into
roars of laughter. How long it took to quell the riot I do
not remember. But Patsy and Johnny soon became
friends again, and were good boys after that. Dear
Patsy, I love you still, and all the more because I know
not whither you have gone from me, or whether you be

FIFTY YEARS AGO -^

living or dead. A separation of nigh unto seventy years
leaves the heart in a desolate winter, and with no hope
whatever of a coming spring, in this life at least.

We were the babes of the school, petted and caressed
by all our elders. But strange things happen. There sat
beside us in our class, the ABC class, a tall, towering,
red-faced, bulky, bushy-headed fellow, the happy, good-
natured giant of the school, between whose father and
Andy Slattery, the schoolmater, an agreement had been
in existence for years, to the effect that when George
Weekes, Jr., would have learned his A B Cs successfully,
George Weekes, Sr., would pay to the said Andrew Slat-
tery, schoolmaster, the sum of five guineas in gold and
the further emolument of a full suit of best broadcloth
md a silk Caroline hat a bargain under which, as a
natter of notoriety, Andy Slattery, schoolmaster, was
oser to his dying day.

For this brilliant schoolmate of mine such affection
,s I had was of the most Platonic kind; yet it had not
rown less with the flight of time, neither had George,
met him again, forty years later, when a pilgrim to my
ative land. I found him as a patriarch of old, sur-
)unded by his happy wife and houseful of blooming
liildren. George Weekes' family home and broad acres

I4 FIFTY YEARS AGO

are at Knockfinnel, overlooking Lough Gur, near Knocka-
doon, in County Limerick, South Munster, the land of the
Desmonds in more ancient times, the land of the Eu-
genians, the descendants of Eoghan Moore, the son of
Olioll Ollum, the King of Munster.

This little village school at Rahen had one great at-
traction for its pupils, which happily fell to my lot to
enjoy, for at that time the famous hedge schools of old
were by no means a relic of the past in Ireland. When
the dark chilly days of the winter of 1834-35 had passed
away and given place to the bright Warm spring and
early summer, Andy Slattery's scholars joyfully ex-
changed the dimly lighted little school-house, which was
Master Andy's residence, for a vicinal sunny glade, shel-
tered by a thicket of hawthorns, where, under the leafy
branches of ash and elm trees, they spread themselves at
full length on the grass or sat upon stone seats ranged in
rows before the master's chair. It was easy and pleasant
to learn amidst such surroundings. Unconsciously, Mas-
ter Andy Slattery's scholars were Nature's most happy
children. Our good Master Andy, at other times rigid
and exacting, was then indulgent, condescending, and
pleasant. As naturally as the grass and the daisies grew
and bloomed at our feet, or as the warm sunlight streamed

FIFTY YEA US AGO I5

through the branches of the trees, so we sought to please
our master ; so we learned our lessons ; so our tasks were
light as air to us ; so we feasted on mental wealth, as de-
lightful to us as the fragrance of the lilacs and the apple-
blossoms that fringed the neighboring fields, the confines
of our play- grounds. The larger little ones, boys and
girls, and those more adolescent, were learning spelling,
reading, and catechism, and had copy-books, arithmetics,
and slates and pencils. I was a minim. I had learned my
prayers at home, the prayers that all little ones usually
learn, and that remain with them in their memories a
blessing unto their dying day the Lord's Prayer, the
Hail, Mary! the Apostles' Creed, and the little verses:

"There are four corners on my bed ;
There are four angels on them spread.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
God bless the bed that I lie on."

4 'Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to God my soul to keep ;
And if I die before I wake,
I pray to God my soul to take.

1 'God bless my father ; God rest my mother's soul, and
the souls of all the faithful departed. ;;

"Sweet Jesus, my Saviour, I give you my heart and
soul. "

!6 FIFTY YEARS AGO

At school I was the happy possessor of a primer that
was fairly aglow with bright, beautiful pictures. I was
sure and certain that my primer had more pictures in it
than the primer of any boy or girl in school ; and I was the
challenger of every boy and girl in school to cog pictures
with me, as we termed our contest, which usually went on
in this way:

"Show me one for that." "There it is."
"Show me one for that." "There it is."
"Show me one for that. " "There it is."

And so the contest went on, picture for picture, until one
or other of the combatants had shown his last picture,
whilst the other had pictures yet to show; then the van-
quished had to acknowledge defeat. But this mode of
learning was contraband of school. And at school as
well as at war there is usually no lack of spies. The
spies, as impudent and shameless as barking dogs on their
hind legs, usually stood up straight in school and cried
out to the master: "Two here, sir, cogging pictures!''
This mi)a voce indictment in open court usually put a stop
to the young gamblers, and before they had finished the
game.

Each page of my^primer had a large, beautiful pict-
ure illustrating a letter of the alphabet, with which letter

FIFTY YEARS AGO I7

the name of the object-picture began. This letter, the
one to be learned from that page, was printed in large and
small type, set above or by the side of the picture. Each
picture had a short legend in rhyme, telling what the pict-
ure signified. The pleasure of looking at the beautiful
pictures in their bright coloring kept me busy turning the
pages over, and learning the letters explained to me by
the teacher, or more usually by some little boy or girl
who knew more than I did, and who seemed wonderfully
learned to me. The task of learning the alphabet by this
method was easy and pleasant, and, with the rhymes
once learned, could never be forgotten. Now, after a
lapse of more than sixty years, rny mind having been im-
pressed by numberless ideas, most of which are beyond
recall, the primer lesson of childhood abides, fresh as a
new-born flower a joy that never fades. Thus went the
rhymes that rhymed :

"A, a, was an ass hard laden with goods;
B, b, was a bear that lived in the woods.

"C, c, was a cat that killed rats in the night;
D, d, was a dog that would snarl and bite.

"E, e, was an elephant, and fifty years old;
F, f , was a fowler, both crafty and bold.

"G, g> was a goat that lived in the hills;
H, h, was a horse that carried bags to the mills.

ig FIFTY TEARS AGO

"I, i, was a jay that would prate in a pie ;
K, k, was a kite that soared in the sky.

"L, 1, was a leopard, and spotted with grey;
M, m, was a mongrel fish that lived in the sea.

"N, n, was a nightingale that sang in the spring;
O, o, was an owl, an ill-looking thing.

"P, p, was a parrot that would chatter and prate ;
Q, q, was a quail that piped early and late.

"R, r, was a robber that died by the rope;
S, s, was a sultan as great as a Pope.

"T, t, was a tailor, a lover of apes;
V, v, was a viper of different shapes.

"W, w, was a wolf dog that guarded the fold;
X, x, was a Xantippe, a terrible scold.' 1

The following is another primer rhyme from the
hedge school at Rahen:

"A was an apple pie;
B bit it,
C cut it,
D divided it,
E eat it,
F fought for it,
G got it,
H had it,
I eyed it,
I, longed for it,
O opened it,
P peeped at it,

FIFTY YEARS AGO ! 9

Q quartered it,
R ran for it,
S sought it,
T turned it,
V viewed it,

X, Y, Z, I wish I had a piece of it
in my hand."

But Rahen is no more; or, rather, what is Rahen now
is not the Rahen that was in the former years. The
teacher of the village school is gone has gone long since
to his heavenly reward. The beautiful little boys and
girls that played at Rahen under the hawthorns and the
elms, and that learned their lessons at the Rahen school,
are there no longer. Of the fifteen or twenty homes,
wherein as many families dwelt in peace and contentment,
not one remains. Over these humble dwellings and hap-
py firesides the green grass grows. The place is silent
as death and solitary as the grave. Emigration, persecu-
tion, inhuman legislation, have done their baneful work.
The virtues and the affections that dwelt there are as if
they never had been. No trace is left of humble lives
most worthy of recall. Of these obliterated homes may
be said, as of a famous city of old, "Even the very ruins
have perished." Of these ruins of Rahen, only one re-
mains; not immediately within the village site, but on its

2 FIFTY TEARS AGO

confines "a noble wreck in ruinous perfection, standing,
withjplf its battlements, alone." Windowless and roof-
less, it withstands the fury of the elements. The Ra-
hen Great House, it is still called; the home of the Ra-
hen O'Gradys a young barrister and his two beautiful
maiden sisters, who, refusing to renounce their Catholic
faith for worldly possessions and preferments, fled with
their honor and their lives to France; to what part of
France no one knows, as from them no word has ever
come back to their native country or the home of their
childhood.

HOLY CROSS.

At seven years of age I was sent to school to Michael
Kelly, who taught in the village of Holy Cross, one mile
distant from the family residence. The way led to school
by no public road, but by a private path through fields,
meadows, and groves and along hawthorn hedges, where
there were, in the season, apple-blossoms in profusion,
and many birds' nests in the sweet-scented bushes in
spring. I was not alone, nor was that path to and from
school a solitary one, mornings and evenings ; with me was
a gay, noisy, thoughtless troop of more than twenty little
ones, boys and girls, from several neighboring families.

FIFTY YEARR AGO 2 l

Merrily we hied and played along together : chasing the
little birds on the bushes, racing for the brightest prim-
roses that grew along the path; watching the crows and
magpies that nested in the groves; wondering how the
little skylarks that we heard singing above the clouds
could have got up so high; listening to the cuckoos that
cooed from tree to tree and that were followed by flocks
of smaller birds, who, charmed by the cuckoos' coos,
forgot their own sweet warblings.

Often we started up from their warm, cozy beds in
the meadows hares and rabbits, who delighted and
amazed us by their agility and speed as they scampered
off, bobbing their white tails in the distance. Some-
times, too, we were frightened and put on the run by
wicked-looking weasels and thorny porcupines. All these
encounters and adventures furnished reasons more than
enough for our loitering along the way and why our
hearts were beating when, coming in sight of the school-
house, we knew we were late and that a strict accounting
awaited us as to how and where we had spent our time
all the morning up to that late hour of the day. Ah!
well may little ones fear when they know they have not
been good and have to answer to a strict teacher for their
sight-seeing and their loitering.

22 FIFTY YEARS AGO

We were children easily frightened, as the following
will show: Once, on our way to school, as usual not
hurrying, we had passed through a clump of trees called
Murnane's Grove and were emerging therefrom over a
stile, when we saw corning towards us a tall man, wear-
ing a battered straw hat and tattered clothes. He was
laughing, as we thought, and reading aloud to him-
self from a screed of torn paper he held in his hand;
nobody in hearing that we could see. We looked at him;
he looked at us with a wild look, as we thought. In-
stantly some little one of our company shrieked aloud,
4 * Madman! Madman!" Presently we broke ranks and
stampeded, each one screaming and running as for bare
life. We could not be rallied until we had reached home.
For the whole day we were out of breath, thinking the
madman was following us. The next day it took a man
as big as a giant and with a club as long as a young tree
to go before us through Murnane's Grove and save us
from the madman on our way to and returning from
school. The cry " Madman !" was then a common terror
to little ones. Only then had humane efforts been well
begun in Ireland to gather lunatics from the roads and
byways and sequester them in asylums.

FIFTY YEARS AGO 23

I learned fast at that Holy Cross school, or I con-
jecture I did so, from the fact, which I remember well,
that I was able to write and read writing between my
seventh and eighth years. In the foot-line of the copy-
book of one of my companions I read the date, as written
there, January i, 1836. "That is not correct/ 1 said I.
"Blot out 1836 and write 1837; we are now in the year

1837."

I remember very well some stirring events of that
year, 1837. One of these events was, that day after day
detachments of red-coated British soldiers carrying guns,
bayonets, and knapsacks, with flags flying, regimental
bands playing, and big drums beating, passed by our
school-house on the way to Cork to embark for Canada,
where a bloody war was going on and where (as it was
said) all British soldiers were killed as soon as they
landed. The reports that reached Ireland of the great
slaughter going on in Canada made the poor soldiers
downhearted and caused many of them to desert on the
way to Cork. As the several detachments marched by,
all the little ones of the school, boys and girls, usually
rushed pell-mell out of doors; and many were the sighs
and tears from aching hearts and weeping eyes in pity for

24 FIFTY YEARS AGO

the poor soldiers, who were going away across the sea to
be killed and who were never more to see Ireland again.
Another event of that year, 1837, is fresh in my
memory. Three or four of us, young lads from eight to
ten years of age, were on our way to school together.
Noticing with delight that we were a squad of boys only,
for we hated the little girls, who, though our sisters or
cousins, were usually spies upon us and tell-tales against
us at school and at home ; so we were glad we had none of
the little dames with us "little hussies," we sometimes
called them. In our unbounded happiness for our
greater freedom and in search for adventures new, we
left the usual path through the fields and meadows and
took a more round-about way, through what was called
the Rockbarton demesne, from which there was an exit
to a public road that led to Holy Cross. Passing by the
elegant church with its massive tower, commonly called
the White Hall Steeple, that stood on the side of the road
opposite to the grand three-gate entrance to the Rock-
barton Manor House and demesne of Lord Viscount
Guillamore, Chief Baron O'Grady, we noticed that the
splendid gate opening into the pleasure-grounds that sur-
rounded the church was ajar. Passing through this gate,
we went to the front door of the church, which we found

FIFTY YEARS AGO 2 5

open. Looking into the inside of the church, we saw no
one there; we heard no voices or footsteps. Presently
one of our company, Carroll by name, ran into the
body of the church, down the aisle, and up into the
pulpit, where, having found a large gilt Bible, he tore out
its pages from cover to cover and scattered them in hand-
.fuls over the pews and floor, as a storm whirls amain
the brown leaves of autumn in the forest. Needless to
say, this act was not aforethought, nor had Carroll
any motive for entering the church other than from
curiosity or the restlessness of youth. He was English
born, a native of London, on a visit for a season to his
relatives in Ireland. But his act, though but a moment-
ary impulse, showed not only irreverence, but hatred al-
so of the church he had entered. It was the Church the
Government of England had forced on the Irish people
against their will and had compelled the Irish people to
support and maintain, although opposed to their con-
science. This unfortunate Church had caused great
trouble in England and her colonies. It was from the
persecutions of this Church that the Puritan fled to New
England and the Catholic to Maryland, to find in the
wilderness and amongst savage tribes the peace denied
them at home. No doubt it was the knowledge of these

2 6 FIFTY YEARS AGO

persecutions, learned by Carroll from his parents in
England and from his friends in Ireland, that inspired
him to do his fiercely wild and thoughtless act. Well and
fully he had known that the pulpit he had entered was
an intruder and a plunderer in Ireland that the gilded
Bible, the glittering church, the ruddy, rotund parson,
with his well-fed, well-dressed wife and children and
servants around him, and who dwelt in a luxurious glebe-
house with park and lawn surroundings, were not repre-
sentative or expositive of the true and honest gospel of
Christ. He knew too well what was in the mouths of
everyone, that all this wealth, grandeur, and show of the
Church of England, as established in Ireland, was pro-
cured from the sales of church property robbed from the
Irish Catholics and from tithes collected from them by
distraint at the mouth of the cannon and the point of the
bayonet, whilst the Catholics were outlawed for adhering
to their faith and driven from the shelter of home to die
of hunger and cold by the roadside. As a matter of fact,
one of these youngsters with Carroll was a member of a
familv that in the preceding generation had been dis-
trained of home and lands, which were converted into a
glebe demesne for one of the predecessors of the parson
who lost his Government Bible at Carroll's hands. The

FIFTY YEARS AGO 2 J

gang of young rebels who saw what Carroll had done
felt no remorse for his deed as a companion of theirs,
and loyally they kept his secret. That parson never
learned who it was that entered his pulpit and gave his
glittering folios to the winds. The young Rapparees,
who were the parson's undoing, had hearts true as steel
and that were afire with love and loyalty to their native
country and its persecuted religion.

The Lord Viscount Guillamore, Chief Baron O'Grady,
resident owner of Rockbarton Great House and demesne,
herein spoken of, was Standish O'Grady, barrister-at-law,
assistant to Sir William Conyngham Plunkett, Attorney-
General for Ireland at the trial of Robert Emmet in 1803,
was promoted to the peerage in 1831, and died at Rock-
barton House, April 20, 1840, aged seventy years. I
knew him well, and his children and grandchildren. I
was at his funeral, with many other boys of my size and
age, in uniform of scarf and white zephyr bands fastened
around our caps and festooned loosely over our necks
and shoulders. The body lay in state for a week in the
baron's spacious library, waiting for the nobility of Ire-
land to assemble at the funeral. On the day of the
funeral the body, in a leaden coffin, was passed out
through a window of the library, which was in the lower

2 8 FIFTY YEARS AGO

story of the house, opening on the lawn. Six horses, ca-
parisoned in black velvet with gold fringes, attached to
the lofty funeral car with its nodding plumes of sable
black, bore the body away to the O'Grady family vault
in the Knockany churchyard, three miles distant. The
inscription, "Vulneratus V ictus," on the door of the
O'Grady burial vault, but too truly symbolized the fam-
ily's fallen condition. But notwithstanding their defec-
tion in modern times from faith and country, the Irish
people have an undying love for the O'Gradys, on account
of their old-time loyalty and their many virtues in the
days gone by. The present incumbent of the Lord Vis-
count Guillamore peerage is Hardress Standish O'Grady,
grandson of the said Chief Baron O'Grady, who died in
1840. Hardress Standish O'Grady is (now in 1898) the
fifth successor to that peerage since its erection in 1831,
and, being without issue, the peerage will die with him.
Blessings have not followed those who persecuted poor
Emmet in the dock and who likewise bore down unmerci-
fully on many others for having been loyal to Ireland.
The O'Gradys are dying out fast. The several branches
of the once loved and respected old family are the fol-
lowing: O'Gradys of Kilballyowen, O'Gradys of Grange,
O'Gradys of Rockbarton and Cahirguillamore. All these

FIFTY YEARS AGO 29

are perverts. Only one branch of the family remained
loyal and faithful the O'Gradys of Rahen, of whom
mention has been already made in these pages.

My lessons at Holy Cross village school were spelling,
reading, writing, arithmetic, catechism, Bible history. I
am not vain if I say I learned fast at that Holy Cross
village school; I know I did learn fast there. But my
growing diligence was mainly due to the magic of the
badge of office in the master's hand. That keen-sighted
master soon saw very well that sweet smiles and honeyed
words had as much weight as chaff with most of the
youngsters he had to manage. There was one kind of
persuasion that had full value with those lads, and that
was the rattle on the jackets on their backs from a cat-o'-
nine tails of regulation pattern, or the bumps on their
heads from blows with the brass door-knob that decorated
the handle end of the said cat. They were not of the
faint-hearted kind, ever willing to atone by sobs and
sighs for faults they had not been convicted of, or to
make promises they did not mean to keep, abridging their
freedom; for although they knew well that the stripes
they got across their shoulders were condign, yet they
were not fully prepared to admit that they had been
totally conquered. A thousand times worse than silly

3 FIFTY YEAHS AGO

they would have been, which they never were indeed, to
appeal from the grand mogul of the school to the powers
at home for reversal of judgment. Such reversal, if they
got it, would be a worthless salve for punishment already
inflicted. Stripes and bruises from the master's hand
were the loudest kind of evidence that the young lads had
been in mischief, and that the chastisement they got
was not half of what they had deserved would be the
parental supreme court decision.

Once, in company with several other boys, having
loitered too long on the way to school, and fearing cor-
rection for tardiness for which we had no sufficient ex-
cuse, we turned aside from the pathway and hid ourselves
in a thick furze covert of several acres in extent. When
evening came, we went home as usual and kept silent as
to where we had been. The next day we played truant
again. Truants we were again, and then day after day
for a week or more. Ah, how much pleasanter it was to a
gang of truant boys to be in hiding under bushes than to
be too conveniently near the tip end of the master's cat-
o'-nine- tails ! The covert in which we hid was thickly
set with tall pine trees, to which the furze was an under-
growth. There we climbed trees, looked for birds' nests,
ran races, played hide and seek, masqueraded grand Turk

FIFTY YEARS AGO ^

and Indian chief, our heads turbaned with pine plumes
and rushes. Our biggest boy, the most stalwart fellow
amongst us, we threw down on the ground on his face
and hands, then we stretched him lengthwise across a
steep water-drain, and on his long back enjoyed ourselves,
chasing each other over and hither, as in the picture in
our books we saw squirrels running on a log. But our
hey-day was soon to come to an end. We had been missed
from school. Search was made for us. Ah, the mean
scouts that betrayed us! I/ike snakes, they crawled on
the grass and hid behind bushes until they spied us. Then
they went and told the master. A posse comitatus of big
boys from the school was sent to gather us in. We were
surrounded, trapped, captured, and marched ignominiously
into the master's presence. Without formalities, we were
sentenced to die the death. I began to make a speech
from the dock. Before a word was out of my mouth, I
was grasped, as in a vise, by the rough hands of the
biggest boy in school. That fellow's back was the
common gallows, on which truant boys paid the penalty
for their misdeeds, and when the execution was over, it
was considerable time before the felon that died the death
showed himself anyjway lively again.

32 FIFTY YEARS AGO

Riding was one of our favorite sports in those days.
We usually indulged in it on school holidays, or when the
master was sick, which meant we were scott-free until he
had got over the measles. Our riding-course comprised
two large adjoining fields, called Barnhill and Feahmoor,
which were traversed by lines of hillocks with sharp
ascents and declivities and by steep earthen dikes or
ramparts curtained by water. This was the topography
of Feahmoor, where the riding exploits took place. The
Barnhill was rather more rocky, and therefore more sug-
gestive of cracked skulls and broken bones of inexpert
young jockies. These fields, to the great delight of us
youngsters, had a never-failing supply of lively, well-fed
donkeys, young and old. Old donkeys were not boys'
first choice, on account of their vicious habits, of biting
their riders* legs and rushing their riders against thorny
hedges and stone walls. Young donkeys were more
choice, as more inexperienced in warfare with bad boys,
who usually wished to enjoy a ride without being put
hors de combat. To ride a fast young donkey and to hold
on his back trotting and galloping and in spite of hoisting,
kicking, and rearing, constituted a boy an undergraduate
in assmanship. But the honor of a diploma was re-
served for the final test, to be made with the rider's face

FIFTY YEARS AGO

33

towards the donkey's tail. At this tournament it was
against the rules, and was inconvenient besides, to use a
bridle ; but the, rider might hold on to the wool as best he
could. Success achieved under these circumstances was
proclaimed by the whole field with vociferous rejoicing.
Discomfiture, on the other hand, never failed to be fol-
lowed by roars of side-splitting laughter, especially if the
young knight-errant should happen to land heels up in a
mud-puddle or in a ditch of water. Not every boy, after
a defeat or two of that kind, would be willing to try it
again; and boys with soiled jackets and pants and mud-
died shirt-tuckers were usually not gallant enough to face
their mammas at home, for full well they knew what
strong faith these mammas had in the virtue of the tough
birch twig that was kept ready for use and that was
well seasoned.

Our less exciting exercises were fishing, swimming,
hurling, running, leaping, vaulting, wrestling, throwing
cast, climbing trees, playing leap-frog, scaling old castles
and old abbey walls. In all these accomplishments I
was post-graduate at the ripe age of ten. It was then no
doubt clearly seen, fully as well as I knew it myself, that
the village school of Holy Cross could not hold me in leash
much longer. As to what conclusions in regard to me

34

FIFTY YEA RS AGO

had been reached then by those who had me in charge I
was not particularly informed. Very soon, however, I
was given an opportunity to comprehend their full force
and meaning. An elderly gentleman arrived at my
father's house Mr. Patrick Ignatius Mulcaire by name,
by occupation a college professor, then in retirement from
duty. With formalities appropriate to his dignity and my
dubiosity, I was introduced to him as my teacher. He
proceeded to express his sincere good wishes for me and
his hopes for my success. His speech was condescending
and graceful, but, stripped of its verbiage, it meant, in
short, that he had me by the nape of the neck and that I
had better at once submit and recognize his government
of me as de facto.

PROFESSOR MULCAIRE.

Mr. Mulcaire, a man of business, was not slow to ar-
range a curriculum for me and to order the necessary class-
books. These were chiefly Lindley Murray's English
Grammar, JBsop's Fables in French, Eton Latin Gram-
mar, a French Grammar, and selections from the writings
and speeches of Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, Richard
Labor Shiel, and Daniel O'Connell. I had no trouble
with the grammar lessons, as my memory was good,

FIFTY YEARS AGO

35

though not very retentive. My French lessons were not
nsisted on very much, as they had increased my naturally
slow and impeded articulation a very marked stammer
>r stutter which it was Mr. Mulcaire's chief business to
:each me to overcome. The grand and glowing elo-
quence of Burke, Grattan, Curran, and Shiel was a delight
;o me; and in the fervor which their brilliant periods
cindled in my mind and feelings, my hesitancy in speech
nelted away as ice before the breath of spring. One great
Doint had been already gained for me by my astute
eacher, who, having noticed my predisposition to choice
eadings of prose and poetry of the better class, was upon
,he alert to cater to my tastes in this respect.

Amongst Mr. Mulcaire's selections for my benefit
vere not only books of the aforesaid class, but newspapers
ikewise, and those chiefly that contained the stirring de-
>ates then going on in the British Parliament on questions
>f absorbing interest the Chartist agitation for extend-
>d suffrage, the Anti-Corn Law League led by Richard
^obden, the free trade and income-tax policy of Sir Robert
D eel as against excise duties on the necessaries of life. It
vas my teacher's care to explain these topics to me and to
trouse my interest in them ; also amongst his selections
>f books for me were novels of the better class and that

3 6 FIFTY YEARS AGO

were written after the best models of English literature.
Notably of this kind was "The Old English Baron/' a
Gothic story of strong moral effect and intense interest to
the youthful mind. I wonder why "The Old English
Baron" has gone out of print, or how it is that it is un-
published and unknown in America? Cordery's "Latin
Colloquies " was another book selected for me by Mr. Mul-
caire ; a very useful book it is for a boy learning to speak
Latin. This book, too, as it seems, is unknown and un-
published in America. I need not say that Mr. Mulcaire
took great pains to procure for me the best and most
useful books of piety and Christian instruction. During
1839, 1840, and 1841 I continued to learn Latin, Greek,
French, and English under Mr. Mulcaire's direction.
During this time, instructed by him in the catechism, I
made preparation for first communion and confirmation,
which I then duly received. It is to him I owe the
gradual bending of my mind to the love of study and my
emancipation from inordinate love of play and playmates.
His direction of me was effected by uniform kindness;
and I do not remember that he ever had recourse to com-
mands to keep me to the line of duty. His appointment
as my teacher was by the advice of my oldest brother,
then a professed member of the Franciscan Order, a stu-

FTFTYYEAX8AQO ^

dent in the College of St. Isidore at Rome, where he died
on the eve of his advancement to holy orders. At this
stage of studies, being in my twelfth year, it was decided
that I should contend with my equals at the classical
schools ; especially those most frequented by students for
the ecclesiastical state.

MEANUS.

Accordingly, in 1842, I attended a classical school,
taught by Mr. Thomas Heffernan, at Meanus, one mile
westward from the family residence. This school was
taught in the Chapel of Meanus, which was succursal to
the parish of Bruff. Mass was celebrated in the Meanus
Chapel on Sundays and holy days and for the convenience
of such as could not go to mass at Bruff, which was three
miles distant. The Chapel of Meanus, which was small
and antiquated, was most attractive as a place of prayer
and study. It stood on a grass plot, within a grove in-
closed by a stone wall of good masonry, with an iron gate,
and over all the embowering trees spread their sheltering
branches. Within the chancel of that little chapel were
four sanctuary pews, belonging to the four principal
patronal families of the parish. The pew on the Epistle
side belonged to four maiden sisters, the Misses Gleeson,

^g FIFTYYEARSAGO

the surviving members of a respectable family from
ancient times, resident at Green Lawn, hard by the
chapel. By invitation of these gentle ladies, I occupied
their pew as a place of study and to keep my books in
while attending the chapel school. The pew on the
Gospel side of the sanctuary belonged to a respectable
gentleman of dignified and patriarchal presence, Patrick
O'Meara, Esq., of Boheryeela, who on the part of himself
and members of his family, appointed his pew to Master
Richard Kane, of Rathmore, for his use while a pupil of
the chapel school. And here I cannot forbear expressing
my feelings of tenderest affection for one so dear to me as
Richard Kane. A graceful boy he was, scarce twelve
years old, with a face ever wreathed in smiles and fair as
an angel's. His wavy curling hair fell down, in soft, loose
folds over the velvet jacket that draped his delicate
shoulders. Rather timid and diffident he was, but offen-
sive or disagreeable never. Gentleness, intelligence, af-
fection, devotion, dutifulness, were his characteristics as
a schoolboy. In no other vesture did his nature clothe
him. He, too, devoted himslf to the American missions.
Having crossed the ocean at the age of eighteen, he readily
obtained admission into Mount St. Mary's Seminary, Em-
mitsburg, Md., where, having distinguished himself as a

FIFTY YEARS AGO 39

student and professor, he was adopted by the Most Rev-
erend Anthony Blanc, D.D., Archbishop of New Orleans,
and was for that diocese ordained priest in 1854, being then
in his twenty- third year. As assistant priest, secretary to
the Archbishop, chancellor of the diocese, college profes-
sor, newspaper editor, he worked laboriously until, borne
down by ill health, he departed this life in the nineteenth
year of his priesthood and the forty-second of his age, on
August 27, 1873. Ma Y God grant his immortal soul
eternal rest and peace. Amen.

On my way through Ireland in 1869, to attend the
Vatican Council at Rome, I stopped for a moment at
Meanus. There, staring widely around, I looked for the
old chapel ; it was gone ; no trace of it was to be found ;
the trees had disappeared; the walls had been leveled
and scattered; the iron gate had been taken away; a new
chapel of better construction had been erected near by
on another site. But the dear old chapel the chapel of
my childhood, with all its loving memories and tender
associations gone, gone, gone! Ah! who will say that
this world does not change, or that those who were young
do not grow old? Ah! my poor heart was sore. There I
stood, alone, alone ! Those that I had loved they were
not there !

40 FIFTY YEARS AGO

CROOM.

Ash Wednesday morning, March i, 1843, marks the
beginning of a sadness for me, which seems never-ending.
It was a cold and dreary day. A floss of white frost hung
on the branches of the trees and on the grass of the
meadows and fields. I was fourteen years of age; in
jacket and trousers. My brother, six years my senior,
took me gently by the arm and spoke kindly to me. I
could make no reply to him. My sobs were too deep for
utterance; my gushing tears were as "the raindrops
without measure." Never until then had I felt the full
depth of my sorrow an unhappy boy without a mother
to pity me or to give me with her blessing a farewell word
at parting. I was told not to sob and cry, for I was not
going away to never come back; but I knew better. I
felt that the shadow of the future that was before me was
not that I would not see home again, but that my setting
out from home meant a life- journey in that one direction.
At the schools of Rahen, Holy Cross, and Meanus I was
at home, for I returned home every evening; but to go to
school many miles away meant to be from home and
amongst strangers. How could I endure it ? Why should
I have been told to go away and to stay away?

FIFTY YEARS AGO 4 j

'Home of my fathers ! Silent tomb,

Where sleep the hopes of former years !
How many flowers have lost their bloom

Since then I left thee, bathed in tears ;
How many joys that youth had given

Amid thy fragrant bowers are hushed ;
How many silver links been riven

From life's long chain, time-worn and crushed!"

Thursday, March 2, 1843, I entered the best school in
the diocese of Limerick, the one at Croom, conducted by
an accomplished and agreeable gentleman and a thorough
scholar, Mr. Patrick Kenny, with an attendance of fifty
young men, for classics only.

That year, 1843, was a memorable year in the history
of Ireland. The temperance movement, begun in 1835,
by Rev. Theobald Mathew, had by this time leavened
the whole Irish people to sobriety, unanimity, and peace-
fulness, and with these went the additional blessings of
fruitful harvests and general prosperity. Never before in
Ireland was there such an advance altogether of the most
powerful factors and agencies, of religious, intellectual,
social, and moral progress. There was a constantly in-
creasing attendance at the churches, colleges, schools,
lyceums, reading-rooms, lecture-halls, trades-meetings,
mercantile clubs, agricultural associations, orchestral en-
tertainments, fair and hurling green amusements, and

42 FIFTY YEARS AGO

over all were spread the blessed angel wings of peace and
virtue. Never before had the population of Ireland at-
tained the numbers it counted on that year 8,750,000
inhabitants.

In the midst of all these blessings that presaged
greater blessings to come, Daniel O'Connell, the great
Irish leader, unfurled the banner of repeal, as it was
called, which meant home government for Ireland.
Strange to say that Ireland, a nation of 8,750,000 people,
larger in territory than Greece and Switzerland together
or than Holland and Belgium together, that had furnished
Wellington and Nelson with half their army and naval
forces that had conquered the world, should be without a
legislature of its own, as in fact it is unto this present day ;
strange to say that an enlightened and liberty-loving
nation, as England is said to be, should have legislated
so adversely and should so continue to legislate adversely
to Ireland and its wishes and interests.

In 1496 the English statute, 10 King Henry VII.,
known as the Poyning Law, from its promoter Edward
Poyning, an Englishman, Lord Deputy for Ireland, en-
acted that Englishmen should govern Ireland, and that
Ireland had of itself no legislative power to introduce a
law not first passed and sanctioned by England. From

FIFTY YEARS AGO 43

1496 to 1782 that is to say, for 286 years, this kind of
legislation kept Ireland impoverished and degraded.

During the American War for Independence, Ireland,
denuded of British troops sent off to the American war,
raised an army for home protection and defense in any
emergency that might arise. This army, 80,000 strong,
called the Irish Volunteers, armed and equipped in 1779,
was thoroughly Irish in organization, spirit, and purpose.
England would have prevented this Irish volunteer move-
ment had she not been then engaged with all her forces
in the American war.

Following the final defeat of the English at York-
town, October 17, 1781, the Irish Volunteers, not having
availed of the opportunity to free their own country while
England was in battle, had now to disband or proclaim
the independence of Ireland, which they were unwilling
or unable to maintain. However, before disbanding and
while still armed and organized, they held a convention at
Dungannon, in County Tyrone, and there resolved that
Irishmen only should thenceforward legislate for Ireland
and rule it. This resolution of the Irish Volunteers, who
were still under arms, was formulated by Henry Grattan
into an ultimatum and forthwith laid before the British
Parliament in words, "We demand immediate repeal of

44 FIFTY YEARS AGO

Poyning's law." This ultimatum of the Irish Volunteers,
presented by Henry Grattan, passed both houses of the
British Parliament simultaneously in April, 1782. There-
upon Henry Grattan, having obtained what was called
"the Constitutional Charter of 1782," returned to Ireland
and disbanded the Volunteers. In his rejoicing he ex-
claimed in a public address: "Ireland is now a nation.
In that august character I hail her. Bowing to her august
presence, I say, 'Esto perpetual y " But alas ! and not for
the first time, Ireland was doomed to disappointment by
England's insincerity. The Volunteer Parliament faded
with the fading ranks of the Volunteers. In 1800 Grat-
tan's "esto perpetua" idol was lifted off her pedestal in
Dublin and taken to London, whither Irishmen must
now go to bow to her august presence.

The humiliating sense and shame of all this wrong
and injustice aroused the great heart and soul of O'Con-
nell to unite and lead the Irish people in a peaceable
demand upon England for a restoration to Ireland of
her rights and liberty. The Irish people, responsive to
O'Connell, organized the monster meetings of Tar a and
Mullaghmast, where hundreds of thousands assembled,
and the no less enthusiastic gatherings at every city,
town, village, and cross-roads, wherever the great cham-

FIFTY YEARS AGO

45

pion of liberty was to pass along on his journeys. The
students of the Croom Classical School, headed by their
esteemed and distinguished teacher, Mr. Patrick Kenny,
never failed to attend these repeal meetings whenever
held within a day's journey; and entrancing was our de-
light hearing the great Irish tribune in defense of human
liberty, and the thunder of his arguments denouncing
tyranny and bondage. In the words and spirit of our
illustrious pontiff, Leo XIII., who, when a young man,
heard O'Connell deliver a speech in the British House of
Parliament, I can fully and truly say of O'Connell, "Fuit
magnus! " (' * Great he was ! ")

To bear the expense of the campaign for repeal,
O'Connell organized an association, of which almost every
man and boy in Ireland was a member. Upon payment
of one shilling towards the funds of the association, the
payer became a member and was entitled to have his
name enrolled as a Repealer, in evidence of which a
certificate of membership was given him, as follows:

46 FIFTY YEARS AGO

LOYAL NATIONAL REPEAL ASSOCIATION
OF IRELAND.

The bearer, ............ , having paid one

shilling, is enrolled as a Repealer on the books of
ffo Association.

Dated //m- .... day o/ ..... , 1843.

THOMAS MATTHEW RAy, Sec'y
1782 Irish Parliament. It was, and shall be.

Each member of the Association got with his Repeal
card a large, shining brass button, emblazoned with ap-
propriate national emblems, which, as a loyal Repealer,
he was required to wear conspicuously on his breast.
The shining, conspicuous Repeal brass button never failed
to bring on a contest when an anti- Repealer caught sight
of it. The spirit of the conflict was usually somewhat as
the following :

On one of my occasional returns to my father's house
for a day from the Croom school, in company with one of
my brothers, I rambled leisurely from my father's farm
into the adjoining Cahir demesne of Lord Guillamore,
where, on the main avenue in front of the Cahir Manor
House, we met his lordship, who, upon seeing us, walked

FIFTY YEARS AGO 47

towards us, and, as we bowed to him, put the following
questions to us, to which my brother replied :

" Aren't you, my good boys, some of the Hogans of
Cahir?"

"Please your lordship, we are. 11

"Sons to James Hogan?"

"Yes, please your lordship. "

"What are those buttons you wear on your breasts?"

"They are Repeal buttons, please your lordship."

"What is a Repeal button?"

"A Repeal button, please your lordship, is a badge
to signify that the person who wears it is a petitioner to
the English Government to give back to Ireland the Par-
liament which the English Government has taken away
from Ireland."

"Does your father know that you wear that button?"

"He does, my lord."

"I wonder at your father to give you such liberty."

We bowed profoundly; his lordship turned his back
to us and walked away.

As already stated in these pages, Standish O'Grady,
Assistant Attorney-General for Ireland, was promoted to
the peerage of Ireland in 1831 under the title of lyOrd
Viscount Guillamore, and died in 1840. His oldest son,

4 g FIFTY YEAK8 AGO

Colonel Standish O'Grady, commander of a regiment at
Waterloo, succeeded to said peerage in 1840, but con-
tinued to occupy his usual residence, the Cahir Manor
House, which stood upon the same demesne as the Rock-
barton Manor House ; the two residences being about a
half-mile apart. This second Guillamore it was who
questioned us on the meaning of the Repeal buttons,
which he knew better than we could tell him. He
died in 1847. After him came his eldest son, Standish
O'Grady, a minor, and under a guardian until 1851, when
he became third Lord Guillamore, but did not enjoy the
peerage long. After the third Lord Guillamore came his
next oldest brother, Paget O'Grady, fourth Lord Guilla-
more, who died in 1877, and was succeeded by his next
oldest brother, Hardress Standish O'Grady, the fifth
Lord Guillamore, the present incumbent. The third and
fourth Guillamores, Standish and Paget O'Grady, were
my playmates in our young days, at Cahirguillamore, on
the beautiful cricket-ground, the orchard meadow, near
the Cahir manor house.

In 1843 O'Connell had already won to his cause the
moral support, not only of Ireland, but, in a measure, of
the whole world, the British Government excepted. To
lure him from his purpose over to the Government side,

FIFTY YEARS AGO 49

he was offered the office of Chief Baron of the Exchequer,
or Master of the Rolls, if he preferred it ; but he had de-
voted himself to the service, not of the English Govern-
ment, but of the Irish people, and in their service he
would remain to his latest breath. Bribery failing, the
English Government had recourse to its next readiest
weapon, coercion. By hook or by crook, O'Connell had
to be crushed. As there was no law whereby to stop him,
it was proposed to make a law that would have that
effect; but, as tyrants viewed the case, law-making was
unnecessary they had bayonets and cannon and the
prison.

O'Connell called a Repeal meeting, to be held at
Clontarf on October 8, 1843. His mottoes then, as always,
were, " Peaceable petitions," "Not the shedding of one
drop of blood." On October 7th, as the people of Ireland
were moving from all directions towards Clontarf to at-
tend the meeting, the Government issued a proclamation
prohibiting the meeting and made arrangements for de-
ploying 50,000 soldiers, cavalry, artillery, and infantry,
at the place of meeting. O'Connell at once sent couriers
in all directions, warning the people of the danger and
telling them to go back home, for the Government had
taken measures to massacre them.

50 FIFTY YEARS AGO

On the eighth day after the date of the prohibited
meeting an -indictment for conspiracy and sedition was
made out against O'Connell, pursuant to which he was
arrested. His trial commenced in Dublin on January 15,
1844, before Chief Justice Pennefeather and three as-
sociate justices and a jury specially impanelled. Argu-
ments and pleading were unavailing; the jury returned a
verdict of guilty. Sentence was passed on O'Connell
one year in jail, 2,000 fine, 5,000 security to keep the
peace. O'Connell was forthwith incarcerated in the Rich-
mond Bridewell, in Dublin. His friends appealed his
case to the House of Ix>rds, who referred it to five judges
of their body; two of these judges were for affirming the
sentence against O'Connell, three of them were for re-
versal of the sentence. The judges reversing the sen-
tence said in their decision: "If such practices as had
taken place in the present instance in Ireland should con-
tinue, trial by jury would become a mockery, a delusion,
and a snare." O'Connell was set free. The whole world
rang with applause for his triumph ; but, deprived of its
legitimate results, his triumph was a defeat. O'Connell
was thwarted in his career and at the point of final suc-
cess. Justice to Ireland, impeded and balked by his ar-
rest and imprisonment, wag set back, perhaps forever,

FIFTY YEARS AOO 5 !

England's tyranny triumphed. The cause of wrong it
was, not O'Connell's cause, that succeeded.

The weight of seventy years was upon O 1 Council's
shoulders, and darker for him than old age were the
shadows of disunion that lengthened apace with the ad-
vance of those who proved disloyal to him and who failed
to benefit Ireland by a change from his peace methods to
force of arms. Borne down by sorrow and disappoint-
ment more perhaps than by old age, he died on the I5th
of May, 1847, at Genoa, on a pilgrimage to Rome to ask
the blessing of the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., and in-
tending to end his life in that sacred city.

I continued for two years, 1843 an d l &44> attend-
ing the Croom Classical School, where I had for fellow-
students the following who became priests, but are now
no longer in this world: Rev. William Connery, parish
priest of Coolcappa, diocese of Limerick; Rev. Michael
Connery, parish priest of Ardpatrick, diocese of Limerick ;
Rev. David Quaid, parish priest of Dromin, diocese of
Limerick; Rev. John Conway, parish priest of Feenagh,
diocese of Limerick; Rev. John Reeves, parish priest of
Loughill, diocese of Limerick ; Rev. John Mulqueen, par-
ish priest of Shanagolden, diocese of Limerick; Rev.
Pavid Quinn, parish priest of Fedamore, diocese of Lim-

52 FIFTY YEARS AGO

erick; Rev. Richard Nagle, parish priest, diocese of San
Antonio, Tex. May God grant these departed priests,
His faithful servants, eternal rest and peace. Amen.

My fellow-students at Croom who became priests
and who are now (in 1898) surviving are the following:
Very Rev. Thomas Hammond, vicar-general, parish priest
of New Castle West, diocese of Limerick; Rev. Luke
Gleeson, parish priest of Parteen, diocese of Limerick.
May God grant those aged, venerable priests the grace of
final perseverance and a happy death. Amen.

One of my most beloved companions at Croorn, who
did not become a priest, was Martin Hartigan, son of
Timothy Hartigan, Esq., of Glenogra, County Limerick.
Having passed his examinations with distinction in the
preparatory colleges, he stopped abruptly at the gates of
the great theological college of Maynooth. The dreadful
responsibility of becoming a priest and pastor of souls
intimidated him, and, though otherwise brave of heart as
well as pure in morals and bright of intellect, he withdrew
to the rank of layman, which state of life he adorned by
edifying Christian example to his latest breath.

I remember also a fellow-student, Patrick Leo by
name, who got into trouble by his own fault at Croom
and elsewhere. Actuated by jealous rivalry of a school-

FIFTY YEARS AGO 53

mate in study, he stealthily opened the schoolmate's desk
and with a knife hacked to pieces the schoolmate's most
valuable books. This schoolmate was Mr. John Conway,
afterwards parish priest of Feenagh, and now dead, as
hereinbefore stated. Upon investigation the act was
proved against Patrick Leo, who, under penalty of public
expulsion from the school, was adjudged to pay for the
books and upon his knees to apologize to the whole school
for his bad behavior. With floods of tears that bespoke
mortified pride, he paid the money and made the humil-
iating apology.

The correction was a severe one for him the more so
because he had not humility to bear it patiently. He left
the Croom Classical School and entered the Queen's Col-
lege at Cork, from which he wrote back defiantly to a
fellow-student at Croom: "Not the bishop's chair I
want, but the judge's bench. I have resigned the mi-
tre and crozier. I hurrah now for the wig and gown/'
From Cork he went to Dublin and entered Trinity Col-
lege. At Dublin he married a stage actress and took her
to the United States. Soon there was riot and bloodshed
in some of the American cities, caused by a Protestant
preacher named I/eo, who gathered money by defaming
Catholics and the Catholic Church. The agitation he ex-

54 FIFTY YE A &S AGO

cited in America getting too hot for his personal safety,
he hurriedly put out to sea and crossed over to Ireland,
where he was rewarded for his apostacy by a salaried
living as a Protestant parson. His unhappy life soon
afterwards came to an end by a sudden death.

HERBERTSTOWN.

In January, 1845, I was transferred from the Croom
Classical School to a school of the same kind at Herberts-
town in the archdiocese of Cashel, intendedly for a higher
grade of studies and a wider acquaintance with students.
Of the Herbertstown students, over sixty in number, I
remember but few.

Michael Moriarty, of Grange, County Limerick,
having finished his classical studies at Herbertstown,
studied theology at All Hallows, Dublin; was ordained
priest in 1853; entered the diocese of Salford, England;
was promoted to a deanery; died in 1896.

Jeremiah Moriarty, of Grange, County Limerick,
after his classical course at Herbertstown, entered Queen's
College, Cork; was promoted to office in civil service of
the British Government in India. Borne down by the
severity of the climate of India, he died in early life.

FIFTY YEA&S AGO

55

Robert Wheeler, of Dublin, studied classics at Her-
bertstown ; entered the Theological Seminary of St. Louis,
Mo. ; was ordained priest in St. Louis in 1848 ; was assist-
ant priest at St. Patrick's Church, St. Louis, in 1849 and
1850; died in 1851.

Patrick Kinane, a bright young student of the arch-
diocese of Cashel, brother of the Very Rev. Thomas H.
Kinane, archdeacon of Cashel, entered the Theological
Seminary of the archdiocese of St. Louis, where his health
failed. Beloved and esteemed by the college faculty
and his fellow-students, he died when preparing for
holy orders.

Patrick Kirby, of Rathjordan, Herbertstown, County
Limerick, having finished his classical studies, joined the
Oblate Fathers of Dublin, of whom he is a distinguished
member. Distinguished and respected he was when a
classical student at Herbertstown. Now (in 1898) he re-
sides at Inchicore, Dublin. He is, so far as I know, the
only surviving member, besides myself, of the Herberts-
town school of 1845.

56 F1FT*Y YEARS AGO

CHARLEVILLE.

For my last year of classics (1846) it was thought it
would benefit me to be amongst students of the diocese
of Cloyne, who were always of fair reputation for diligence
and attainments in study. Accordingly, in the first days
of January, 1846, I was sent to Charleville, where there
were two classical schools, the best in the south of Ire-
land. I was delighted with the young men, from whose
ranks many of the priests of the diocese of Cloyne were to
be chosen. They were bright, studious, and gentlemanly.
The Charleville school manifested great earnestness for
work. The students were usually in their proper places
at the proper time. There was but one daily session of
six hours. The several classes followed each other in the
order assigned them, from the study-rooms into the reci-
tation-room, each class reciting for its allotted hour or
half-hour, then retiring to make room for the next in-
coming class. This was the usual order of the day in the
several classical schools I attended, but nowhere else was
the regularity maintained that prevailed at Charleville.
The animating spirit of the students was: "Work, not
play. Time is precious ; make good use of the fleeting
hours." At this late day of my life, it being now two and

FIFTY YEARS AGO

57

fifty years since I stood in that school, I have lost nearly
all trace of those who were my schoolmates there. Two
of them that I remember best I will mention :

Charley Daily, of Churchtown, County Cork, an angel
in personal beauty, morals, amiableness of character, and
exalted intelligence, died in that school year, 1846. Had
he lived, no station in the Church or on the bench could be
considered beyond his reach. Fortified by the sacraments,
with the prayers and tears of his devoted fellow-students
and sorrowing relatives, his death was peaceable, calm,
and holy. In the early morning of life, but seventeen
years of age, in his innocence and gracefulness, and before
the dust and strife of advanced years could have left aught
of taint upon him, he was called away by his Heavenly
Father to a better world. The sweet, ingenuous ways
and gentle smiles of that dear boy, who was as lovely as a
morning flower, can never fade from my recollection.

Next, I remember very well William Gleeson, of Kil-
coleman, Nenagh, County Tipperary, a boy much beloved
and petted by the members of the family to which he be-
longed. Having completed his studies in Charleville in
1846, he pursued his theological studies in the Irish Col-
lege, Paris, where, by the invitation of Right Rev. John
Timon, D.D., Bishop of Buffalo, he joined that diocese

5 g FIFTY YEARS AGO

and was ordained priest in 1853. ^ e served in the diocese
of Buffalo forty-two years, until his death on December
2, 1895; having been for his last thirty- two years vicar-
general of the diocese.

MATHEMATICS.

My too protracted reading of classics left me deficient
in exact science, which, in my tenth year I had discon-
tinued at the termination of an ordinary course in arith-
metic, in order to take up the Latin grammar. Having
soared for years among the stars of the classical heavens,
it seemed bewildering to me to think that from such
heights I should come down and begin again from another
starting-point. Very plain it was to me, as was clearly
impressed upon my mind by those who knew more than
I did, that without some knowledge of mathematics my
education would be incomplete and disappointing to me.
Though reluctant and somewhat late, I came to the de-
cision that the defect should be remedied. Again, as
when beginning classics, the parental care that was
moving me along gave me a special teacher for math-
ematics. For two years this adept teacher and school-
boy grinder, Mr. Shaughnessy by name, who was not par-
ticularly partial to classical scholars, for, as he said, they

FIFTY YEARS AGO 59

had no exact knowledge of anything, kept me constantly
under mental strain with what I sometimes too carpingly
called his infinitesimal problems. Having gone through
the mathematical mill, I can aver that it is the heaviest
kind of brain-work, for which no labor-saving machinery
has yet been patented, even by Yankee ingenuity. Ge-
ometry, algebra, trigonometry, land surveying, civil en-
gineering, and astronomy are not the light gossamery
things flaunted by Cicero in his "De Oratore," or by
Edmund Burke in his essay on the sublime and beautiful.

THE FAMINE YEARS.

In the autumn of 1845, when the Irish farmers were
confidently looking for a continuance of the plentiful
crops of preceding years, an unprecedented state of
affairs met their wondering gaze. Their principal source
of plentifulness, the potato crop, had turned to blight
and rottenness.

One year's loss, though attended by much distress,
was cheerfully borne, with the buoyant hope that next
year's crop would be sound and plentiful; but the next
year's crop, that of 1846, was beyond comparison worse
than that of 1845. There was now no hope. Famine

60 FIFTY YEARS AGO

stared the people in the face ; and those who viewed the
situation in its full import were blanched with fear, for
the food of the people was rotted before their eyes.
Eight million seven hundred thousand people were
without their daily food, and most of them had not where-
with to support life for one day. Not the locust, or the
canker-worm, or the mildew, or the palmer-worm had
devoured the crop; it was blighted, and it withered.
Soon those whose means of support had been used to the
last morsel had to go out of doors to beg help from their
no less needy neighbours. Day by day the famine-
stricken multitude increased, and made beaten paths as
wide as public roads through the grassy fields and the
ploughed lands, going from house to house and from
village to village, begging a morsel of food from others as
distressed as themselves. The famine cry soon reached
the ears of the English people and the English Parliament
who governed Ireland.

The Duke of Cambridge, son of George III., brother
of George IV. and of William IV. and uncle of Queen
Victoria, delivered himself as follows on the famine
in Ireland :

"Ireland is not in so bad a state as has been repre-
sented. I understand that rotten potatoes and seaweed,

FIFTY YEARS AGO 6l

or even grass, properly mixed, afford a very wholesome
and nutritous food. Irishmen can live upon anything,
and there is plenty of grass in the fields, even if the potato
should fail."

Lord George Bentick, a friend to the Irish people,
introduced a bill in the British Parliament to empower
the Government to borrow .10,000,000 to build railways
in Ireland, whereby employment would be givfin the
starving people. The British Parliament rejected the bill.

Famine and its consequent fever were now carrying
off hundreds of poor people. In the hospitals and tem-
porary fever sheds, along the road-sides, in the fields, and
by the thickets and hedges were stretched and strewn and
huddled together the dead and the dying, their yellow,
pale faces pitiful to see; men, women, and children; the
dying infant at the dead mother's breast; many of them
with green herbs of the field protruding from their mouths,
from which they vainly sought sustenance.

Provisions were plenty enough in Ireland; the rich
had abundance. Fat cattle and sheep, in herds and by
the thousand, browsed at ease over the grassy fields of
the wealthy landlords; but what poor man dare touch
what the landlord owned? The bayonets of the British
Army and of the British police force in Ireland, in obedi-

62 FIFTY YEARS A&O

ence to stubborn English laws, held the poor in abeyance.
The poor in Ireland were denied the right to carry arms,
lest when starving to death they may assert their right to
live ; the poor in Ireland, because not having wealth, were
denied the right to live, were deemed unworthy of the
protection of the law ; the outlawed poor in Ireland were
doomed to die and they died; die they did in Ireland
of fever and famine. The fever and famine dead were
buried in heaps, sometimes uncoffined, usually in their
plague-infested rags ; their heads unrested in their graves
save on a rough stone or on the bare earth; without ker-
chief even to cover the once sweet face and the eyes that
loved and the lips that spoke kindly from rough contact
with the cold clods of earth that shut them out of sight
forever.

Of poor, unhappy Ireland, as truly as of Jerusalem
in its desolation, may the pathetic words of Jeremiah be
said : ' 'Weeping she weepeth in the night. Her tears are
on her cheeks. And there is none to comfort her." In
1851, when the famine years were over, Ireland had lost
2,100,000 of her people.

FIFTY YEARS AGO 63

THE MOST SERIOUS YET.

In the first days of the month of October, 1848, my
father, who had directed my education, being then in his
sixty-third year, met me one day as I happened to be
walking alone and engaged me in a very serious conversa-
tion, which greatly engrossed my attention: "You are
now/' he said to me, "in your nineteenth year. Your ed-
ucation has gone on quite long enough to enable you to
see and choose for yourself. It is God's will that each
one should consider and choose for himself such way in
life as he may be able to enter and follow, having in view
his eternal salvation and the occupations he may prefer.
I have directed your education somewhat towards the
ecclesiastical state. It is now for you to choose. You
have come fully to the years when it is incumbent on you
to make a choice and to engage according to your prefer-
ence. Pray that God may guide you; I will pray that
you choose what is for the best. When you reach a con-
clusion, let me know of it, so that I may aid you if I can,
or as you may have need of me." Needless to say,
these October days were for me a continuous'meditation.
How should I know what to do ? Whence obtain the nec-
essary knowledge? Without experience, to choose a way

6 4

FIFTY YEARS AGO

of life, not knowing practically what a career in life was ;
obliged to go into the darkness of the future, whereon for
me not a ray of light hath fallen. "O Lord, hear my
prayer/* "Give ear to my supplication in Thy truth. "
"Hear me in Thy justice." "Hear me speedily/ 1 "O
Lord, make known to me the way wherein I should walk,
for I have lifted up my soul to Thee. Thy good spirit
shall lead me into the right land." (Psalm 142 :8, 10.)

The priesthood, as God would direct, was ever my
chosen purpose, and from the very beginning the goal
towards which the events that bore me onward were con-
tinually pointing. It is in my earliest recollections that
the old people who knew me from childhood were contin-
ually giving me their blessing and telling me I would be a
priest one day. Unconsciously, as I grew up, I found
myself, without seeking on my part, drawn into the posi-
tion of leading in the recitation of the family night prayers
and rosary and litanies, serving the priests in the neigh-
boring chapels and when the station for mass was held at
our house, also teaching the prayers and catechism to the
serving men and women and boys and girls who worked
in my father's house and on the farm. To me likewise,
usually as it happened, fell the duty of meeting the poor
at the door, who came asking for alms, to whom I was

FIFTY YEARS AGO 65

often admonished to be respectful and to never send one
of them away without proffered assistance. The sincere
thanks and fervent prayers of those poor people always
made their little almoner happy beyond measure, and
truly ecstatic was his bliss and joy when their benedictions
fell as whisperings from heaven into his ears* "Ah,
then! may the heavens bless you, dear child. May you
never want for anything, and may the world wonder at
your luck."

No one imagined, nor had I other thought or pur-
pose, but that the studies I had been pursuing were a
preparation for the priesthood. How or why the con-
viction prevailed on all sides that I would be a priest is
what I do not know and cannot explain; but, borne on-
ward with this conviction, I steadily approached the goal,
as much bound to it in purpose as I am now in fact, with
the fiftieth year since my ordination almost in sight.
Even now in my dreams I am still upon that purpose, as
I often imagine I am in the seminary preparing for ordi-
nation and conjecturing how long it may be before I be
called to holy orders.

It was not, however, until my return to my native
place in 1894-1895, for the recovery of my health, that I
heard of the whisperings that were current around my

66 - FIFTY YEARS AGO

cradle. On that return to my native place I called on an
aged gentleman, blind and bedridden and in expectation
from day to day of his departure from this world, who
narrated to me the following:

"The night you were born my brother Tom and I
were aroused from our beds by your father, who sent us
over to the village of Grange to inform the friends of the
family there of your birth. On our return from Grange,
as we were passing through Cus Jennery, on the bounds
of Rahen and Cahir, we heard in the furze covert at that
place the sweetest music that our ears ever listened to,
and we remained listening to it for a considerable time.
Arrived at the house, we inquired who the musicians were
that we heard playing at Cus Jennery and if they had not
been sent to meet us. We got answer that no musicians
had been engaged for the occasion and that none had been
sent to meet us. Music of this kind was heard also when
your brother James was born, and it was then believed
that he was intended for the Church, which came to pass,
for he died in holy orders at the Franciscan Monastery
in Rome."

The narrator of these events was by name Patrick
McGrath, who, from his early boyhood, spent almost his
whole lifetime in my father's employment, and with his

FIFTY YEARS AGO 67

saved-up earnings purchased a little farm and cottage in
fee simple, wherein he lived comfortably with his family
to an extreme old age and departed this life in peace,
fortified by the grace of the last sacraments, beloved, re-
gretted, and respected by all who knew him. May his
soul rest in peace. Amen.

MY MIND MADE UP.

I had learned from many reliable sources of informa-
tion that in the far-away Western World, on the banks of
the Mississippi, a great diocese was growing up that had
immense missionary fields, over which the Church was
spreading rapidly. One of my sources of information,
the "American Catholic Almanac/ 1 sent regularly every
year to my father by his brother, my uncle and namesake
in America, gave full description of the diocese of St.
Louis and had a well-executed frontispiece engraving of
the Cathedral of St. Louis and buildings adjoining it, so
that I had become greatly familiar with the place. Priests
were not needed in Ireland, where for every vacancy
there were twenty or more applicants. In the St. Louis
diocese it occurred to me that possibly there might be
more vacancies than applicants, as it was a new country.

68 FIFTYYEARSAGO

Why^not'gcTwhere, as it was reasonable to suppose, "the
harvest was great, and the laborers few"? Besides, I pre-
ferred going where few had gone before me and where
new paths had to be opened. Of "perils of rivers" or of
"perils of the wilderness/' I was not afraid. St. Louis
was, as I regarded it, my foreordained place. I made up
my mind to go there. This conclusion was reached by
me on Thursday, i9th day of October, 1848. I sought an
interview with my father and informed him of my pur-
pose and of the reasons that led me thereto. He unhes-
itatingly gave me his necessary permission to depart and
that I might begin at once to make preparations for
the journey.

OPENING THE WAY.

The next day I rode twelve miles to Limerick to con-
sult the shipping agents as to the best way to go to St.
Louis. The shipping agents informed me that, as the
American railways had been built only as far west as the
western boundaries of New York and Pennsylvania, the
journey thence westward to St. Louis, about 1,000 miles,
was too great to be attempted by uncertain ways, such as
stage-coaches and sailing on lakes and rivers, especially
as the cold, freezing weather of winter was about to set in.

FIFTY YEARS AGO

69

They advised that I sail from Liverpool to New Orleans
and take steamboat from New Orleans to St. Louis, which
I might possibly reach in the early part of winter, should
the Mississippi River be then free from ice, as they thought
it might be, on account of its more southern latitude than
that of the northern lakes and rivers. Accordingly, I en-
gaged passage from Liverpool to New Orleans on the first
ship sailing on that voyage that I could reach, which was
the Forfarshire, advertised to sail on Wednesday, No-
vember ist, the intervening eleven days being sufficient
for my preparation and the journey to Liverpool. On
that same day that I went to Limerick, Friday, October
2oth, I returned to my home at Cahirguillamore and an-
nounced my purpose to finally leave home on the following
Tuesday, October 24th, feast of St. Raphael Archangel.

ADIEUS AND DEPARTURE.

Accordingly, on Tuesday morning, October 24th, at
4 o'clock, more than two hours before sunrise, having bid
farewell to friends and relatives, there remained for me
the unspeakable sorrow of separating from my father,
whom I was never to see again in this world, as he was
then aged and feeble. Fully aware of the hour set for my

yo FIFTY YEARS AGO

departure, he had not risen, his usual time of rising being
6 o'clock. It was not for want of affection for me that
he had not risen; never was father more devoted or
kinder ; but he did not wish to favor one of his children
more than another. Too much familiarity with his* child-
ren he never indulged. No child of his has had the
boast to make that he was honored with a seat on his
father's knee. That father knew his place, and kept it
everywhere with everyone ; that father entering the com-
pany of his children was the signal for them to rise, every-
one of them, and to remain standing until he had taken
his seat. For the last time I knelt by that father's bed-
side and asked him for his blessing, which he imparted.
It is not to be inferred that at that parting there were
not sobs and tears.

LIMERICK.

I reached Limerick in less than two hours, and was
at the railway station on time for the departure of the
morning train for Dublin. The train went out on the
Limerick and Waterford Railway as far as the Limerick
Junction and there turned northward on the tracks of
the Great Southern and Western Railway for Dublin.
The Limerick Junction was then the southern terminus

FIFTY YEARS AGO 7I

of the Great Southern and Western, the part of said line
from said Junction to Cork not having been commenced.

DUBLIN.

Arrived at Dublin in the evening, I straightway
proceeded from King's Bridge terminus by the Liffey
along the quays past the Custom House to the North
Wall, where I found the steamship Royal William with
steam up bound for Liverpool. The Royal William, then
one of the fastest steamers afloat, made the voyage from
her Dublin pier to her pier in Liverpool in ten and a
half hours.

LIVERPOOL.

In the gray dawn of morning, Wednesday, October
25th, I was in England, at Liverpool, walking along the
docks, looking for the ship Forfarshire, advertised to sail
for New Orleans on Wednesday, November ist. I found
the Forfarshire, but her appearance was very disappointing
to me. She was a wide, large, dirty, heavy-looking ship.
Her sails were anything but snow white, with plenty of
pitch and tar splashed on her decks, bulwarks, and rig-
ging; besides, she looked very deep in the water, and

7 2 FIFTY YEARS AGO

near her, on the wharf, there was a whole cargo yet
waiting to be stowed in her between decks. I was greatly
discouraged, and still more so when I had learned, upon
inquiry, that the Forfarshire was a slow ship, her usual
voyages between Liverpool and New Orleans being from
seven to nine weeks.

I called at the ship's company office and inquired
for the name of the first ship belonging to the company
following the Forfarshire for New Orleans, and when that
ship was to sail. The answer was : "The next ship of our
line following the Forfarshire for New Orleans is the
Berlin, an American clipper ship, commanded by Cap-
tain Smith, a Boston Yankee. The Berlin is a good ship
and a fast sailer. Would you wish to engage passage on
her?" I said, "I engaged with your Limerick agents to
go out on the Forfarshire on November ist, but as I am
in no particular hurry, and as I would like to stay in Liv-
erpool a week or so, I would be glad if you would fa-
vor me with a transfer to the Berlin." I presented my
passage certificate, obtained at the Limerick office, which
was found to be correct. I had no difficulty in getting a
transfer to the Berlin. The Forfarshire sailed on her ap-
pointed day, November ist. When I saw her leaving

FIFTY YEARS AGO

73

port, her dirty sails unloosed in the wind, I considered
myself fortunate waiting for the Berlin.

OFF FOR THE AZORES.

Early Wednesday morning, November 8th, I was
aboard the Berlin. It was not long before the sailors
commenced loosening the ship's moorings. Soon, by a
hawser heaved by a capstan, the ship moved slowly to-
wards the gate of the dock. Outside the dock, a tug-
boat in waiting took the ship in tow and steamed out into
the harbor. In the meantime the sailors unfurled the
sails and hauled the yard-arms before the wind. At once,
with sails set, the Berlin moved forward and closed up
with the tug. Immediately the connecting hawser was
let go from the tug and was hauled in by the ship ; then,
with parting salutes, the tug fell back, and the ship
bounded westward towards the open sea. At nightfall
the good ship Berlin rounded the Holyhead Capes, was
the next morning out of the Irish Sea and into St. George's
Channel ; thence south-westward, out of the cold fogs and
mists of northern Europe, she cleaved the waves onward
to the Azore Islands, which she reached on the eighth day
of the voyage, Thursday, i6th November; 1,500 miles

74 FIFTY YEARS AGO

from Liverpool, at average rate of sailing 7 miles per
hour. No stay was made at the Azores; not a sail was
lowered there, although the orange groves, the vine-clad
hills, and the villages down by the sea looked inviting.
South-west by west was now our course. The next land
to be looked for was off the American continent, the Ba-
hama Islands, the northernmost group of the West Indies.

THE DOLDRUMS.

Shortly after leaving the Azores we got into the
trade-winds, which, in the part of the ocean we were
sailing, blow constantly from north-east to south-west,
and were, therefore, favorable to our course. In this
trade-wind region the weather was delightful. The
sailors had little to do, as the sails were seldom shifted.
Once the heat became very oppressive and continued so
for three days; then, the winds having entirely lulled,
there was a perfect calm. During this calm the sails hung
flat by the masts and yard-arms, and the ship rocked
lazily to and fro, like a happy lady in her rocking-chair,
doing nothing. The sea-calm, which happens oftener at
the equator than at the latitude we were sailing in, is
called "the doldrums," from the wearisomeness of drifting
back and forward with the tide.

FIFTY YEAHS AGO

75

While becalmed we had much company. The fishes
seemed to like us, especially the beautiful blue dolphins
that continually played, chasing each other and darting
this way and that, up and down through the water,
around our ship like merry school-children on a picnic.
Whales, too, were numerous, young and old ones, who
seemed delighted to be near us. Some of them, when our
ship began to move, followed us for days.

SARGASSO SEA.

There, too, was the Sargasso Sea "meadows," the
sailors called it, from its green carpet of seaweed floating
on the waves. Who that has sailed, if but once in his life,
between the West Indies and the Azores, does not wel-
come the coming time when, not through fog-banks, ice-
floes, cold, piercing showers, and sharp-toothed winds of
the North Atlantic, but over Indian-summer seas and be-
neath sub-tropical skies, the American tourist shall hie
his pleasant journey to Europe's classic shores and the
far-away Orient?

-6 FIFTYYEAR8AGO

THE BAHAMAS.

Friday, December 9th, towards midday, the captain
was the observed of all as he stood on deck, with sextant
raised to his eyes, taking observations of the sun, on pur-
pose, no doubt, to find the sun's altitude and therefrom to
ascertain the ship's position as to the latitude she was
sailing in. Soon after midday, having completed his ob-
servations, he laid his sextant aside, and, strapping a
large -telescope over his shoulders, climbed to the foretop-
mast, where, having secured himself in the ship's rigging,
he pointed his telescope towards the western horizon.
After an hour or so, perched on his lookout, he shouted
to those on deck, "Land! Land! Land, ahoy!" Then,
having given commands to the sailors, the sails were
shifted and the ship's course changed to a more south-
westerly direction.

All eyes were now strained towards the western hor-
izon to catch a first glimpse of shore. In no very long
time the American shore appeared in dim outline, and
then gradually rising above the sea. Soon the hills ap-
peared, and next the white foam of the breakers dashing
on the beach. Another command from the captain and
the ship's course was again changed, more to southward,

FIFTY YEARS AGO

77

parallel with land, which lay about three miles distant, to
starboard. Having sailed by the coast for some miles,
the ship was next headed westward, through Hole in the
Wall Channel, into the waters of the West Indies. The
cape that we rounded was the southernmost promontory
of the island of Abaco, the largest of the Bahama Islands,
distant from the Florida shore of the American continent
about 1 80 miles.

The distance from the Azores to Hole in the Wall
Channel, 2,900 miles, was sailed from i6th November to
9th December in 23 days. Average sailing, 126* miles
per day; average sailing per hour, 5} miles. Deducting
3 days becalmed, the average sailing per hour was 6 miles.
Our captain meant to make good time. With Yankee
dash and daring, he urged his ship forward by the shortest
route and with every square inch of canvas set. Often,
in heavy squalls, the bounding Berlin was heaved stag-
gering across the waves, almost on her beam-ends.

KEY WEST.

From Abaco, leaving the islands of Andros and New
Providence on the left, we sailed towards the Florida
Reefs, by which we coasted until we were to southward
of Key West, which was on Monday morning, December"

78 FIFTY YEARS AGO

i ith. The course we had sailed from Abaco to Key West
was necessarily very oblique, as it lay between and around
islands and along the great curve of the Florida coast.
The distance sailed was about 300 miles. Time, from
6 P. M. Friday to 10 A. M. Monday, 40 hours; average
sailing per hour, 7$ miles.

THE FLORIDAS.

Mid-December weather, as I found it at the Ba-
hamas and Floridas, differs very much from weather of
the same season at the British Isles. In the Bahamas
and the Floridas the air was soft, mild, and balmy ; in the
British Isles in December the blasts are raw, harsh, and
chilling. But there was still greater difference in favor
of the south in the shorter winter nights. In the West
Indian sub-tropical climes the winter nights are scarcely
of greater length than the winter days. In the far
northern climates the long dreary winter nights wear life
away in darkness, almost never ending. The aspect of
the heavens, too, presents the same contrasts at these
different places. The sun, moon, and southern stars ap-
pear to us at the North to be far away and low down to-
wards the horizon. In the South these same heavenly

FIFTY YEARS AGO 79

bodies seem nearer to us and brighter and to ascend more
overhead as they cross our meridian. At the same time
in the farther South stars new to us, that we never saw
before, rise up to greet us.

THE TORTUGAS.

In the early hours of the night of December nth, as
we were sailing westward of Key West, a sailor was sent
aloft into the rigging, having orders to look out north-west
to starboard for a light-house, which he was to report as
soon as seen. Those on deck who heard the order given
thought they might interest themselves looking for that
light-house. An hour or more passed away and no one
reported having seen the light. Later on I thought I
saw a light glimmer; again I saw it, and again and again
I saw it at short intervals. I reported so quietly to the
ship's officer on duty on deck at the time. He looked in
the direction that I did and affirmed my observation, that
the glimmer on the surface of the sea was from the light-
house we were looking for. The man at the masthead
may have mistaken the bearing of the light as given by
the officer, or he may have been listless or drowsy at his
post. The Tortugas light having been sighted, orders

go FIFTY YEARti AGO

were given to change the ship's course to north-west for
the mouths of the Mississippi.

"SWEET SILVER LIGHT OF THE MOON."

On the night of December loth, when sailing west-
ward through Providence Channel, the moon, apparently
in its southern declination, being then about the full,
rose resplendent from the waves astern, on the port or
left side of the ship, and, increasing in brightness, as-
cended the southern skies towards the meridian. The
same beautiful phenomenon attracted general attention
on the following night, December nth, as we were sailing
from Key West towards the Tortugas; also on the night
of December i2th it was very bright on deck, and there
were many promenading in the " sweet silver light of the
moon." But, to their astonishment, beautiful Luna had
changed her place in the heavens, had danced and skipped
around from the left to the right side of the ship. There
she stood to starboard, who but yesternight coquetted
on the port side. How did it happen? Were there more
moons than one at the tropics? Or was that moon they
saw there, that had danced from one side of the ship to
the other, the same staid, decorous moon that they had

FIFTY YEARS AGO 8l

known at the British Isles? Some said they were glad
not having to go farther than New Orleans, for at the
equator or at the antipodes who could say but people
were walking on their heads, heels up, everything topsy-
turvy. My brains, too, might have got into the swim
had I not had with me some charts, the pages of an or-
dinary atlas of geography, from which I had learned that
at the Tortugas our course should necessarily change
from south-west to north-west. The ship it was, and not
bright, lovely Luna, that had danced around from left to
right and deceived us.

TORNADO.

It is often said, "All is not gold that glitters "; so it
was with Luna and the fair skies she dwelt in. Later on
that night of December i2th, as we were sailing towards
the Mississippi, great clouds began rising up from the
horizon towards the zenith. Soon the moon and stars
were involved in impenetrable darkness that grew darker
still as the clouds advanced. Our ship sailed into the very
storm -center, or rather the storm-center came straight
onwards against our ship. It was a fierce onset. A fury
of lightning, thunder, wind, and rain shook up the sea
from its depths. and rattled the poles of the heavens.

g 2 FIFTY YEA ItS AGO

Amid the heaving of the sea and the crash and roar of the
elements, the captain gave his orders: "Lower sails!
Cover pumps, capstans, chains, anchors, all metal and
iron works!" so as not to attract the lightning. The
tornado, though fierce and powerful, was brief. It soon
spent itself and passed away, leaving the good ship Berlin
still above the waves, victorious and unscathed. After
that we had fair skies and good sailing across the Gulf of
Mexico to the mouths of the Mississippi, where, on Thurs-
day morning, December i4th, shrouded in fog-banks, we
anchored in muddy water, that, as far as the eye could
reach, had befouled the color of the sea. The distance be-
tween Key West and the mouths of the Mississippi, 550
miles, was sailed in 72 hours, at average speed of yj miles
an hour. The whole distance, from Liverpool to the
mouths of the Mississippi, 5,250 miles, was sailed in 5
weeks and i day, at the rate of 146 miles per day, or 6^
miles per hour.

MOUTHS OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

%

We had not been at anchor long when a tugboat hove
alongside and soon another tugboat came. Between
these two tugboats our great ship, with sky-scraping masts,
like a giant between two dwarfs, was propelled over the

FIFTY YEAR& AGO 83

shallow bar at the mouth of the river, into the deeper
water inside the entrance. Once over the bar, one of the
tugs steamed out again to sea. The other tug began its
hard task, towing us up against the current to New
Orleans, 107 miles distant.

To a person from the British Isles, the United States,
as seen at the mouths of the Mississippi, is a mockery
of sublime anticipations. No bold headlands; no high,
rocky bluffs ; no cities on hills ; no hills at all ; no heathery
uplands or daisied fields leading down to the sea ; no mur-
muring sea, for there was no ebbing or flowing tide
not enough rise of tide to cover a croaking frog; no belt
of strand to mark the boundary between land and water,
for land and water seemed interlocked and of the am-
phibious kind an impenetrable jungle of swamps and
bushes, infested with sharks, snakes, and alligators.
There was water enough, of the kind it was, but who dare
drink of it? Ha! That from the marshes smelt of toads
and reptiles; that from the Mississippi suggested a fish-
trap, for, besides mud, it may have a young alligator in
it. And this is America America indeed. Alas! No
help for me now ; I am on the Mississippi, and must go it.
This ship I am on won't stop until I get to New Orleans ;
and if I throw myself overboard and attempt to swim

g 4 FIFTY YEARS AOO

ashore, maybe the alligators or the buzzards will get me.
See the miserable, muddy banks, not high enough above
water for a drowning rat to dry himself on.

I went to my berth in the ship and shut myself up in
it; a happy relief it was from wretched sight-seeing.
How long I remained in the berth I do not know ; it was
not long, however, for anxiety and discouragement had
made me restless. Out upon the deck again I went; I
remained on deck. Sometimes the ship stopped, some-
times it went on. Once I looked out over the ship's bul-
warks and saw we were between what seemed to be two
long, low earth-mounds, one on either side of the river;
there was a bend in the river at the place. These mounds,
on which there were trees and houses and gardens and
people, were the first patches of elevated grounds that I
saw since the tug took us in tow. I was told they were
fortifications or land batteries, Fort St. Philip and Fort
Jackson by name, guarding the approach to New Orleans
from invasion by sea.

RICH AND PICTURESQUE.

Early Friday morning, December i5th, I was out on
the ship's deck, and found the aspect of the surrounding
country greatly changed for the better, There were many

FIFTY YE A R 8 AGO 85

orange-groves in sight. The golden fruit, thick upon
every branch and embosomed in the green leaves of the
native tree, presented a pretty picture. Farther on there
were great, wide sugar plantations, with many men at
work, cutting down with lusty whacks of billhooks and
cleavers the rich sugar-canes that stood twice a man's
height over their heads, like a young forest. In the dis-
tance on these plantations there were buildings with tall
chimneys, towards which the sugar-canes were hauled in
wagons, to be boiled and refined and the extracted sugar
and molasses to be stored in hogsheads and barrels.
Here truly was a rich and picturesque country, yielding
sweetest treasures, of wealth untold, for the comfort and
delight of man of whatever nation or clime. There were
cotton plantations, too, fully as delightful and valuable
as the sugar plantations. Apple and peach orchards and
vineyards were numerous, also rice and vegetable farms,
all showing a varied culture. The homes of the wealthy
planters, and in a manner the farm-houses and village
dwellings, seemed bright and comfortable, many of them
fronted and flanked by broad porches and verandas and
shaded trellises of honeysuckle, virgin's bower, and grape-
vines. Of exceeding beauty and grandeur were the
stately live-oaks, the great magnolias, and the tall cy-

86 FIFTY YEARS AGO

presses draped in every limb and branch with long tresses
of green pendant moss that swayed back and forth in the
breeze. In the foreground of some of these plantations
and villages the church, with its cross-crowned belfry or
steeple, was seen.

NEW ORLEANS.

Towards evening I began to have regrets, as our ship
passed severally the English Turn, the Chalmette Planta-
tion, the Jackson Battle-ground, and other places of in-
terest. In the calm and glow of a bright sunset upon the
Father of Waters and upon the forests and plantations
upon its banks, the curtains of evening (Friday, De-
cember 15, 1848) drew gradually around us and our good
ship Berlin, as we slowly rounded the great ellipse of the
curving shore that gives name and fame to the Crescent
City. To God, the Creator and Father of all, be endless
praise and thanks for His infinite goodness and unbounded
mercies for so favorable a voyage.

Next day, Saturday, December i6th, I inquired at
the shipping offices for the ship Forfarshire, sailed from
Liverpool, November ist. I learned that the Forfar-
shire had not yet arrived, but, according to her sailing
record, she might be expected in a week. This was the

YEARS AGO 87

ship from which I got an exchange of passage, at Liver-
pool, to the ship Berlin.

Sunday, December lyth, I heard mass at St. Joseph's
Church. Upon inquiry, I was told that the priest who
celebrated the mass at which I assisted was Father
Moyneham, who was reverently spoken of.

There were several reasons why I did not stay long
at New Orleans. It was not my place of destination.
The cholera was prevalent, having been lately brought
there from Havana. I was advised to lose no time set-
ting out for St. Louis, as the river near St. Louis might
close with ice at any time, and that, if once closed, it
would remain so for the winter.

THE BIG MISSOURI.

The first steamboat to leave for St. Louis was the
Missouri, called the Big Missouri, on account of its great
size. I engaged passage on the Big Missouri. Monday,
December i8th, early in the afternoon, the Big Missouri
backed out from her New Orleans wharf and turned her
prow up stream for St. Louis. I had not been to Holland,
where, as is said, the people live below the level of the
sea ; but my want of knowledge of Holland was counter-
balanced in America by sailing on a river fourteen feet

gg FIFTYYEAR8AG6

above city streets and adjoining farm-lands at New
Orleans, La. What is called a dyke in Holland is termed
a levee in Louisiana They mean the same thing a high,
wide, strong embankment to hold back the water, be it
Zuyder Zee or Mississippi, from drowning people. Be-
tween levees holding within them the Mississippi River*
whose water-level was as high as the third floor of three -
story houses adjacent, the Big Missouri^ a veritable three-
decker, with two large chimneys vomiting smoke and
steam and with two large paddle-wheel boxes, each as
big as a moderately-sized house, forced her ponderous
bulk up against the muddy stream northward towards
St. Louis at the rate of about ten miles an hour. There
were on board about one hundred passengers and fully as
many more in charge of the steamboat officers, engin-
eers, firemen, deck-hands, barbers, bartenders, dining-
room waiters, ladies' maids, ship carpenters, ship painters,
and others of that class.

The Louisiana country north of New Orleans pre-
sented the same general appearance as in the districts
immediately south of New Orleans, deep loam soil,
without stone or boulder ; immense sugar and cotton plan-
tations, worked by bands of negroes directed by over-
seers. In the marshes bordering on streams and rivers

FIFTY YEARS AGO 89

and in the background of the plantations fronting on the
Mississippi there were extensive forests of cypress, live-
oaks, and magnolias, draped in green Spanis moss, hang-
ing in tresses to the ground and swaying to and fro in
the gentle wind. No old castles, abbeys, or round towers
in Ireland, in their massive plumes of never-fading green
ivy, look half so majestic as do these giant cypress-
trees a myriad army, each plumed and mantled with
tons of gray-green moss as they stand sentinel over
the mighty Mississippi and its tributaries in southern
Louisiana.

The Big Missouri steamboat, a grand floating palace,
a gigantic commercial power, in keeping with the genius
of its surroundings, made frequent landings from place
to place along the banks of the Mississippi, embarking
and disembarking passengers, loading and unloading com-
modities, mostly immense piles of cotton bales and hogs-
heads and barrels of sugar and molasses.

BATON ROUGE.

Early on Tuesday morning, December iQth, we made
landing at Baton Rouge, the capital of Ix>uisiana, 130
miles from New Orleans. From Baton Rouge our Big
Missouri turned its prow to mid-river and again master-

90 FIFTY YEARS AGO

fully took up its course northward, passing through a
country similar to that we had sailed through the previous
day. Gradually, however, towards midday and during
the afternoon and evening the character of the country
seemed changing. We were passing from southern to
northern Louisiana. Some hills, but of no great height,
gave bolder character to the east bank of the river. On
the west bank the aspect was unchanged. At this place
one of the great tributaries, the Red River, flowing from
the north-west, enters the Mississippi.

NATCHEZ.

Sometime in the early part of the night, December
1 9th, we made landing at Natchez, built on a high bluff
on the east bank of the river, in the State of Mississippi, 280
miles from New Orleans; the west bank opposite Natchez
being in the State of Louisiana. Wednesday morning,
December 2Oth, we made good progress northward,
having Louisiana on the west, still to our left, and the
State of Mississippi on the east, to our right The char-
acter of the country on the west was still the same as on
previous days, low, level rich land, with sugar and
cotton plantations and some corn-fields. To the east the

FIFTY YEARS A # 9 1

rising ground on the river bank seemed to grow gradually
higher and higher as we advanced northward.

VICKSBURG.

On that same day, December 2oth, in the evening,
we reached Vicksburg, also built on a high bluff, and in
the State of Mississippi, 408 miles from New Orleans ; the
west bank of the river opposite Vicksburg being in the
State of Louisiana. Sailing northward from Vicksburg,
we soon passed on our left the northern boundary of
Louisiana. After this the adjoining States along our
course were : to the west, on our left, Arkansas ; to the
east, on our right, Mississippi. Westward, in Arkansas,
the character of the land was unchanged ; it was low, flat,
rich land, having deep loam, easily tilled. Cotton was
the prevailing crop. The cotton was then being gath-
ered in. Literally, "the fields were white for the harvest. "
The cotton plantations were beautiful to behold. Seem-
ingly as numerous as the open cotton-bolls on the cotton-
trees were the darkies busy at work, picking the cotton
and putting it into baskets. In the far distance, beyond
these cotton plantations, the tall, dark forests, apparently
of impenetrable depth, loomed gloomily in sight. Sugar
plantations were no longer to be seen. Fields of corn,

92 FIFTY YEARS AGO

with large yellow pendant ears, were the outposts of the
plentiful harvests and the teeming granaries of the great
Northwest. In this neighborhood another of the great
tributaries, the Arkansas River, flowing from north-west
to south-east, enters the Mississippi.

FIRST CHOLERA CASE.

Here, a sad story to relate, we had our first funeral.
Close by the Father of Waters, in the deep, mellow soil
of the Arkansas shore, with bowed, uncovered heads, we
sadly and reverently closed the grave of a fellow- voyager,
not known to any of us, who was suddenly taken away
by the incoming plague, the cholera. Sorrowfully, as we
were leaving, we took a parting look at the solitary grave,
around which none but strangers had stood; no kindred
were near, nevertheless the evidences of sincere sorrow
were not wanting. A toll of the steamboat bell hurried
us back on board ; the gangways were hauled in, and we
were soon again under way, heading for our still distant
destination. On the two following days, Thursday, De-
cember 21, and Friday, December 22, there were similar
sad scenes, which were more private, however, as it was
thought best not to alarm the passengers.

FIFTY YEARS AGO 93

MEMPHIS.

Soon after midnight, December 22d-23d, we arrived
at Memphis, situated on a long, high bluff on the east
side of the river, in the State of Tennessee, 858 miles from
New Orleans.

CAIRO.

Sunday forenoon, December 24th, we arrived at
Cairo, 111., on the east bank of the Mississippi, at the
mouth of the great eastern tributary, the Ohio River,
1,104 miles from New Orleans. At this point the weather
was freezing, and thin floating sheets of ice appeared on
the river, going swiftly with the current.

CAPE GIRARDEAU.

After midday, December 24th, we reached Cape
Girardeau, on the west bank of the Mississippi, a Missouri
town, having a fairly elevated site, the first rising ground
of any note that we saw on that side of the river since we
left the Gulf of Mexico. From New Orleans the distance
by river to Cape Girardeau is 1,138 miles. Sunday after-
noon and evening, as our steamer was going northward
from Cape Giradeau, the weather grew very much colder

94 FIFTY YEARS ABO

and the floating ice grew thicker and came down the
river in much larger sheets.

ST. GENEVIEVE.

Early Christmas morning the weather was exceed-
ingly cold; the steamboat was sometimes at a standstill,
aground on a sandbar, or fast in the ice. Three deaths
amongst passengers and deck-hands were reported. The
sky was overcast and snow was falling. We were some-
where near St. Genevieve, 1,218 miles from New Orleans
and within 60 miles of St. Louis. The steamboat car-
penters were hard at work repairing the great paddle-
wheels, damaged by the ice, and building in front of the
steamboat's prow an auxiliary prow of heavy timbers,
wherewith to save the hull from impact with the ice. In
the course of some time the steamboat's paddle-wheels
began moving ; slowly at first the steamboat moved along
a partly open narrow channel in mid-stream, where the
ice was thinner or had not closed across solidly.

ST. LOUIS.

Working on steadily through the ice, stopping oc-
casionally for repairs, maintaining doggedly the purpose
to make port, we reached the wharf at St. Louis about

FIFTY YEARS AGO 95

noon, December 26th, in eight days from New Orleans,
the distance by water being 1,278 miles. Average rate
of sailing per day, 160 miles; average speed per hour, 6
miles ; the same speed nearly that was maintained by the
Berlin crossing the ocean. Like a good, God-fearing
sailor, I went first of all to the nearest church, the Cathe-
dral of St. Louis, to make my thanksgiving to God for
my safe arrival at my place of destination, after having
passed through many dangers and hardships.

Next morning, December 27th, feast of St. John the
Evangelist, I went to confession, heard mass, and re-
ceived holy communion in the Cathedral of St. Louis.
It was now in order for me to present myself to his grace
the Archbishop of St. Louis. Accordingly, at a season-
able hour in the afternoon, I entered from Second Street,
through the gateway into the flower garden, surrounded
by a high wall, in front of the hall door, on the eastern
side of the old-fashioned but respectable-looking quad-
rangular two-story building, flanked by verandas, and
known as the Archbishop's Residence, by the side of the
Cathedral. Having gained admission into the Archbisop's
Palace and into the public reception-room, I requested
the favor of an audience with his grace the Archbishop.
1 was told his grace the Archbishop was from home and

9 6 FIFTY YEARS AGO

that he would be absent for some time. I then asked
for a brief interview with the Very Rev. Father residing
near the Archbishop and attending to the Archbishop's
business in the Archbishop's absence. After some min-
utes' delay, a portly, dignified, venerable ecclesiastic,
Very Rev. Simon A. Paris, rector of the Cathedral, a
Frenchman, entered the reception-room and asked me
what the business was on which I came. I gave him my
name, told him where I was from, and what my business
was. He replied that every place in the Seminary was
occupied, and that it was unlikely there would be any
vacancy soon, as several students whojiad been prom-
ised places were waiting for their turn to be called. I
thanked him for the information he gave; at the same
time I said that as I had traveled a very long journey to
see his grace the Archbishop of St. Louis, I would await
his coming home to see him. Very Rev. Father Paris re-
tired. I passed out by the same way I had entered.

On Sunday, December 3ist, I heard mass in St.
Patrick's Church, St. Louis. It was the parochial mass,
celebrated by the Rev. William Wheeler, the parish priest.
The sermon, appropriate to the beginning of the new
year, was preached by Rev. Father Higginbotham, the
assistant priest. The preacher called the attention of the

FIFTY YEAXS AGO 97

congregation to the fact, already well known to them, as
it had been published in the newspapers, that the Asiatic
cholera was then in the city and spreading, having been
brought by a steamboat lately arrived from New Orleans.
In view of that fact, it behooved every good Christian
who valued the salvation of his soul to begin the new
year well by a devout reception of the sacraments, as a
timely preparation for an event inevitably impending
the death of many then and there listening to him before
the expiration of the year about to begin. He reminded
them of the great numbers that had died in St. Louis of
the cholera in 1832 and that had been alive and well when
that cholera year of 1832 began. His sermon made a
deep impression on his attentive hearers and was pro-
phetic. During the year 1849 St. Louis was decimated
by the Asiatic cholera ; towards the end of the month of
August the death-rate having reached 275 a day.

Upon the return home of his grace Archbishop Ken-
rick, towards the end of January, 1849, I renewed my
request for an audience with him and obtained it. Hav-
ing knelt for his blessing, which he very paternally im-
parted, I presented my letter of recommendation, which
was very brief, as follows :

9 8

FIFTY YEARS AGO

"BRUFF, COUNTY LIMERICK, IRELAND,

"23 October, 1848.

"I know the bearer, John J. Hogan, well. He goes
to America to enter the sacred ministry. I recommend
him to any prelate who may need his services. I am
confident he will not be found wanting.

" ROBERT CUSSEN, D.D., V.G., P.P."

His grace read the letter and remarked: "I know
Doctor Cussen well. He was my fellow-student at May-
nooth." Then, taking a book from his library, he told
me to open it at any page and read and translate some of
it. It was a Latin book, the name of which I do not re-
member. I read and translated a paragraph or two.
Then, at his grace's bidding, I conjugated some verbs,
declined some nouns, quoted rules for the syntax of
words and for the quantities 'of syllables. My examina-
tion was at an end. His grace took the book from me
and put it back in the library. He said: "At present
there is no vacancy in the Seminary. We are enlarging
it, however. Next month, or about Easter, I will have
a place for you. You may come about that time." He
next inquired whether I had any relatives or friends in
St. Louis, with whom I might perhaps be staying. I re-
plied that I had a letter of introduction to Rev. Father
Carroll, of Alton, 111., from Father Carroll's brother in

FIFTY YEARS AGO 99

Ireland, and that it was my intention to go to see Father
Carroll. His grace was pleased to know that Father
Carroll was my friend, and he readily gave me his consent
to go to see Father Carroll and to remain with him until
my place in the Seminary would be ready for me.

ALTON.

At Alton I found congenial occupation serving mass
and taking care of the altar and sacristy of St. Peter's
Church, of which Rev. Father Carroll was pastor. The
Rev. Michael Carroll, of distinguished personal appearance,
a nobleman by nature, and of extraordinary zeal and
ability as a priest, was born in Effin, County Limerick,
Ireland, in 1816. Having completed his classical studies
in Ireland, he sailed for New York and thence proceeded
to the Western States. He entered the Seminary of the
Barrens, Perry County, Missouri, where, after the or-
dinary theological course, he was ordained priest on De-
cember 8, 1842, in the Cathedral of St. Louis, by Right
Rev. Peter Richard Kenrick, D.D., Bishop of Drasa, and
coadjutor of Bishop Rosatti, of St. Louis. Rev. Father
Carroll, immediately after his ordination, was appointed
to Alton as its first pastor. He built a church at Alton,

I0 o FIFTY YEARS AGO

and opened missions at Edwardsville, Troy, Bunker Hill,
Ridgely, Carrollton, Jerseyville, and Carlinville, 111., suc-
cursal to the church at Alton. In the company of Father
Carroll and those of his immediate environment I found
ample opportunity of acquiring useful knowledge and of
social enjoyment.

Chief amongst Father Carroll's friends was Mr.
Trenchery, Frenchman, blind from his birth ; educated' in
a school for the blind in Paris ; music teacher to the best
families in Alton; organist of Father^ Carroll's church;
mathematician, historian, astronomer; student of polit-
ical science and economics. A paradox as well as a
prodigy he was, for on the cardinal maxim of philosophy,
that there can be nothing in the intellect that was not
first in the senses, it seemed impossible that that blind
man's intellect could have attained its varied knowledge
without knowing the external appearance, size, shape,
distance, color, of any of the objects by which he was
surrounded. When an organ or piano wanted repair or
was out of tune, he took it apart, examined it, found the
defect, remedied the defect, put the several parts to-
gether again, tuned the discordant keys, set all up in
order, and then, with his magic finger-touches, brought
out series after series of fugues and symphonies, such as

FIFTY YE AX 8 AGO IOI

the instrument never throbbed to before. So with the
guitar and the violin. His gentle manners and devotion
to music exerted on me much of the influence that he
had over musical instruments. I obeyed him passively.
When new music was sent to him, or when he wished to
learn a new piece, he smilingly approached me and, in
a soft, whispering voice, said: "John, read the notes
for me," We moved towards the piano, at which he took
his seat; then the notes were read to him; they dropped
out in music at his fingers' ends. After a reading or two,

he got the character and spirit of the music and the rest

*
followed a masterly improvisation. Next to music, he

studied Brownson's Review, which I read to him, often
an hour or longer at a time. Brownson was then creating
a sensation by his essays on philosophy, theology, pol-
itics, literature, and government. At this time also the
electric telegraph began to be injise in the Western States,
a line having been lately built between St. Louis and
Alton. This greatly attracted Mr. Trenchery's attention,
so that he could hardly sleep or rest until he had learned
how lines and dots, written at a distance, could be read
thousands of miles away, from a ribbon of paper. I en-
deavored to explain to him the working of the telegraph,

so far as I could communicate it to him, by reading de-
scriptions of it from books and newspapers.

Mr. Michael Carroll, an elderly, respectable gentleman,
not, however, of the same family as Father Carroll, was
the teacher of Father Carroll's parish school at Alton.
Teacher Carroll had ideas far above the curriculum of the
parish school; and he was not over-modest, expounding
those ideas to Mr. Trenchery, the organist, and to John,
the student. In a word, he had perpetual motion on
the brain. In order to please Teacher Carroll, or, more
truly, to keep him from going wrong in his head entirely,
we consented to aid him to prove his principles by the
erection of machinery in accordance with his plans for
the purpose.

The church basement, a long, high, wide room, we
converted into a carpentry or workshop, by erecting
therein inclined planes, on which we operated wheels and
axles propelled by pending weights, for the purpose of
acquiring a constantly increasing momentum to sustain
unceasing oscillation; it being Mr. Carroll's theory that a
body descending an inclined plane could lift another body
of equal weight up a similar inclined plane to the height
from which the descending body started, and thereby

FIFTY YE AR8 AGO 103

maintain a perpetual motion that might be increased
indefinitely.

The experiments of course, failed as there was no
additional lifting power to overcome gravitation, friction,
and atmospheric resistance. The experiments were re-
peated from time to time, but always ended in failure,
which Mr. Carroll attributed to defective machinery,
rather than to error in principles. The repeated failures
greatly increased Mr. Carroll's anxiety lest, as he said,
someone, getting knowledge of his theory, and having
more friends and means than he had, should apply for a
Government patent and obtain it before he did, thereby
depriving him of the fruit of his plans and labors. The
organist closed the stances by telling the teacher, with a
playful, sardonic smile, that in his opinion the only way
to get perpetual motion was to suspend the laws of Nature,
whereby the Creator held the universe together and in
motion.

On an elevated plateau, facing the river and over-
looking the streets of Alton, there stood beside the Cath-
olic church and the priest's house the residence of a
large, tall, portly, active, impetuous man, who was withal
a gentleman of elegant manners, an eminent physician,
having an extensive practice, a Catholic, one of Father

104 FIFTY YEARS AOO

Carroll's most distinguished friends, Dr. T. M. Hope.
Whenever Father Carroll and Dr. Hope spent an hour
together, as they sometimes did when official duties hap-
pened to be at a lull, they had a most enjoyable time,
as was evinced by the loud bursts of laughter indulged in
with emulation by them. A never-failing source of mer-
riest laughter for these happy professional gentlemen
was the historic duello that had then lately nearly come
to the point, with broadswords, on the west bank of the
Mississippi River, opposite Alton, under the wild forest
trees of the Missouri shore, whither the principals, at-
tended by their seconds, all from Springfield, 111., were
wafted by the ferry-boat to meet in mortal combat,
according to the code that governs blue-blooded gen-
tlemen. Dr. Hope's services were engaged as profes-
sional surgeon for the occasion. Needless to say that
the Doctor went fully prepared for business, having taken
with him his case of battle-field surgical implements,
wherewith to saw and reset the hacked and battered
bones and to staunch and stitch the slashed and sabered
arteries of the immortal combatants none other than
Abe lyincoln, the future President of the United States,
and James Shields, the future hero of the Mexican War.
When the two young suckers, Hector and Ajax, arrived

FIFTY YEARS AGO IO5

on the duelling-ground, and were donning their war-paint,
Dr. Hope grasped them both between his powerful hands
and disarmed them of their broadswords, telling the
young fellows to go home and behave themselves and
not to disgrace their country and friends, or he would
put them across his knee and spank them for their ras-
cality. Dr. Hope broke up the cock-fight and tamed
the young roosters. Like the siege of Troy it was all on
account of a lady.

I had happy days at Alton, favored with the com-
pany of the priest, the doctor, the organist, and the
teacher a unique quartette, whose likes I would fain
meet again. But events were hastening on. The Right
Rev. James O. Vandevelde, D.D., Bishop of Chicago, con-
secrated at St. Francis Xavier's Church, St. Louis, on
Sunday, nth February, 1849, began the visitation of his
diocese at Alton on Passion Sunday, March 25th, the
feast of the Annunciation. I served his mass daily while
he was at Alton. Having heard that I was an ecclesi-
astical student, he offered to take me to Chicago and
give me a place in the Seminary there. I thanked his
lordship and apologized for inability to accept his gra-
cious offer, as I had already engaged with the Archbishop
of St. Louis to enter the St. Louis Seminarv.

10 5 FIFTY YEARS AGO

His lordship Bishop Vandevelde was accompanied
by his vicar-general, the Very Rev. William J. Quarter,
brother of the late Bishop of Chicago. With Rev. Father
Carroll, I accompanied these dignitaries to the Alton
stage-coach office at the Alton House hotel, whence, on the
arrival of the daily mail stage-coach from St. Louis, they
were to take their departure for Chicago, where they were
to arrive, as by schedule time, on Saturday, March 3ist,
the day before Palm Sunday. When the stage-coach ar-
rived at the Alton House from St. Louis, his lordship the
Bishop and his vicar-general took seats already engaged
for them for their journey to Chicago. The Very Rev.
Father William Quarter, the vicar-general, a large, portly
man with massive head and shoulders, felt very uncom-
fortable in the narrow stage-coach. Especially incon-
venient to him was the broad-brimmed clerical hat he
wore, which hindered him from resting his head against
the back of the stage and, bareheaded he could not be,
as the weather was freezing. "Oh," said he, "how un-
comfortable is this narrow vehicle! and how shall we be
able to endure it three days and three nights to Chicago?' 1
Then, turning to me, he said: "John, give me your cap
and I will give you my hat. With my hat on your head
you will be a man forevermore." Not sooner said than

FIFTY YEARS AGO Io?

done. I gave him my cap ; he gave me his hat, the first
hat I wore. My head, as I imagined, seemed so big I
thought everyone was looking at me. As the stage-coach
was about to move away, we knelt and his lordship the
Bishop gave us the blessing. The dearly beloved Bishop
and his distinguished companion, the vicar-general, were
soon out of sight, lost to our loving gaze.

Shortly after these events I got notice from St. Louis
that the place in the Seminary at Carondelet was ready
for me. To dear Father Carroll I expressed most grateful
thinks for his exceeding great kindness to me. Also to
those near the said Rev. Father with whom I was ac-
quainted, I bade adieu. On the swift Alton packet, Lwlla,
I descended the river to St. Louis, where Mr. Shepherd,
the procurator of the Seminary, met me and took me to
Carondelet, to be there domiciled as a student of the
diocese of St. Louis.

Looking back on this journey from the distance of
fifty years, may I not confidingly say, the angel Raphael,
:m whose feast I set out from home, had conducted me
safe ; the prayers of my pious father were heard when he
alessed me at my separation from him: "May you have
i good journey, and God be with you on your way, and
rlis angel accompany you ' ' ? (Tobias, 5:21.)

I0 8 FIFTY YEARS AGO

THE ACT OF PRAISE.
Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.

Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.

Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of
the altar.

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be God in His holy Angels and in His Saints.